What you’ll hear in this episode

• Disrupting the mining industry
• Going from idea conception to starting a business
• Hypersciences future as an energy provider

Mark Russell is the founder and CEO of Hypersciences a Washington-based startup focused on solving “some of the world’s most challenging problems.” Russell got his start in the mining industry at a young age as his whole family is in the mining business. He then went on to earn his bachelor’s degree in Aeronautical engineering and a master’s degree in Aeronautics and Astronautics from Stanford. He has worked on different aerospace projects, startups, and in 2014 he founded Hyperscience. With the work done at Hypersciences, he’s been disrupting the energy, drilling, and mining industries through innovative technologies ever since.

It all began for Russell while working with his brother on drilling the deepest hole in North America for Diamond Drill Core. Two miles underground Russell brings up technology he had seen from the University of Washington that would make the process of drilling deep into the mines much easier. The tech in question is called Hyper Sonic which fires projectiles at five times the speed of sound and is 10x faster than traditional tunneling technologies. They began doing tests in their grandfather’s abandoned mines, and in these tests, they found drilling was not only easier but quicker and safer. Not long after this, he received funding from Shell Energy for the continued development and testing of this technology.

With these groundbreaking technologies, Russell believes the next step for Hypersciences in the coming years is to take its place as a geothermal energy provider. He claims the drilling technology would allow them to quickly drill anywhere with any ground conditions to access geothermal energy.

Russell told us that working on startups has thought him a multitude of lessons. One that he stressed was that when you get an idea you must really understand that idea before you do anything else, and you need to hit the market at the exact right time. He thanked Elon Musk for making tunneling seem mainstream and cool because it has brought this industry to the forefront of the market. He went on to share for all entrepreneurs, that when you have an idea to not blink and laser beam focus forward no matter how hard moving forward is.

Listen to our tenth installment of the entrepreneurial podcast, Masters and Founders, to hear more about Hypersciences and how they’re shaking up a variety of industries and Mark Russell’s experience as a master and a founder. If you like what you hear or have learned something new, be sure to share this episode with a friend or colleague!

Masters & Founders is a founding_media podcast created in collaboration with foundingAUSTIN.

Host: Dan Dillard

Guests: Mark Russell

 

Transcript:

this week I have the exciting opportunity to speak to another master and founder Mark Russell is the founder and C. E. O. of hyper science is a company that is disrupting the energy drilling and mining industries growing up in a family active in mining and after completing his masters in aero and astro engineering mark worked on L. space projects start ups to is now bring his expertise together to revolutionize the drilling and energy sectors with hyper sciences with his eye on bringing geothermal energy to the masses and making mining safer this conversation was a quick master class in the next phase in energy in technology here’s my conversation with mark Russell

hi and welcome to another edition of masters and founders where we tell stories of masters of have more than ten thousand hours at their craft and founders of the phone companies and we learn from them today I’m super excited to be talking to mark Russell of hyper sciences one because it’s just really cool technology and also it’s after five and read in a day or so super sent out that mark thanks for being on the show them thanks a lot for having this is awesome so

before we get into your background I won’t talk about hyper sciences because a new technology we just like to give us the thirty second run down and we’ll dive records or later yeah it’s a technology that we fire projectiles at five times the speed of sound is called hyper sonic and in doing so we disrupt tunneling energy drilling and transportation it is a novel technology that truly so disruptive for these new new businesses while I love the especially with everything that’s going on with with the lawn musk is doing at four and also is a space but just everything on just trying to get better cleaner energy I just think that this is a very affable to all those things some super excited talk about it

I what about you let’s talk about you as a fun what where did this concept come from so my background I’m an aero astro engineer used to work actually is lead engineer for blue origin the company Jeff Basil started in space nice but I actually let first per capsule development and then before that their first vertical take off and landing so background is entrepreneurial aerospace and then my whole families in the mining business so I grew up I’m a kid from north Idaho silver mines so this was an opportunity to really integrate aerospace technology and underground for a brand new way to fly okay moved to

stop for a second and talk about working for the rocket company like blue origin yeah what was that like you know it was so I think I was probably employee ten twelve yeah so is really early they when I came over I was actually building for her before getting hired I was really my own express vehicle so wrote Myerson the president then I knew quite well he pulled me out of the desert after doing some testing and said look we want you to help us build a company and it was fascinating working with Jeff business almost on a daily or weekly basis so brilliant brilliant team very challenging work super cool math amazing

all right back to your story first concept of this like where that at what point do you not gonna go build something you know that’s a really good one I took the leap to leave blue origin looking for a new way to fly I felt that you know chemical propulsion for rockets does have an end point that isn’t as efficient as utilizing you know everything propulsion so I stepped away I was actually working with my brother drilling the deepest hole in North America for a diamond drill core and we were down over two miles deep it’s two o’clock in the morning on a drill rig and I said I see this technology to university Washington this call ram accelerator we can just make it too and get rid of all that chemical propulsion stuck together we can fly through this too and we started building systems and testing actually my grandfather’s old silver mine and we realized oh my gosh not only can you go up you can tunnel bore fast with this you can actually drill and that’s when we actually called shell and said I think we can drill anywhere on the planet for deep geothermal energy twenty four hours later they called back and said we’d like to find you so it was pretty it was a pretty cool time to something and then get that kind of response

talk about quick yeah one of the companies or industries are you looking at so your first and foremost it the low hanging fruit that the tunneling is actually right for innovation they’re just grinding away folks like you on Moscow great to revolutionize kind of the efficiencies but fundamentally we have a technology that breaks the rock unlike a rotating grinding bit this actually uses medir like energy to deposit break that rock pop it off at ten times the speed that any rotating drill bit or any type a type of tunnel boring machine could you know pull rock away so that is a fundamental game changer so that enables a brand new type of transportation and then there’s the everything transportation we wanna NASA contract to actually build and design and automated test facility for hyper sonics to air breathe maybe from you know New York to Hong Kong in an hour these are the kind of opportunities were looking at okay

I’ve got a question we go back to the tone yeah he said it’s ten times faster so can you give us an idea of you know what current telling you how much the the the I guess my board yeah around the edge right that boring company you’re currently because so and then what this does to change and make it more efficient yeah so tunneling today you’re sort of looking at tens to hundreds of feet per week the best you could probably hope for today is in the future sort of three hundred feed a week we’re looking at a technology can do mile week so the ability to now do three D. toddling to do Hyperloop type opportunities were actually talking some fairly big players are coming up so it’s there’s some exciting things happening while innocent base in December we agree with a few that allows transportation quickly underground we think that’s cool but you’re gonna need to break a lot of rock very cool the I love when things are just much much more efficient and going from hundreds tens and hundreds of feet to a mile week yeah that’s amazing congratulations on that that’s been we actually were total border for lan musket started the boring seven it’s also

yeah all right so I’m going to now take us back to the question you sort of talk about which is their breathing a proportion Fulson could you help the audience understand what that means sure so you get on a jet airplane every day there’s thirty thousand take offs and landings rockets today there’s maybe three hundred rocket flights a year so what airbreathing propulsion allows you to do is do you trust your jet engine you get on an aircraft and you don’t think about other than is my flight going to be on time so if you want to go from here to there you know delivering packages or people around the globe the opportunity is to bring that air in a hyper sonic capacity where you’re actually flying using today’s everything rather than rockets to get you from a to B. on the planet this is an opportunity to basically impulsively fly from one location think of our flight runways is is tubes underground we’re actually putting the hyper you know Hyperloop type two very cool and

you were talking about how this technology is destruction that are making it more efficient yeah I think is so you know to start with it’s still early days on you know the hypersonic flight pieces but what NASA found intriguing is that we could fly things that would normally take weeks and months to prepare we can fly every few minutes with our system actually flying near white sands missile range there’s there’s a commercial spaceport down there were not actually going to space were actually flying in the atmosphere and testing these technologies to to air breathe so instant NASA ordered department of energy or sorry a department of defense they have to go rent a B. fifty two put a rocket under the wing fly there breathing test apparatus up to hypersonic speeds with a rocket and then open it up for everything we just exit the two but the speed you need to test that so this will develop brand new technologies for aircraft that now can get us again from you know New York to Tokyo in an hour or so

when did you know that you had a tiger by the tail you know that’s a great question previously I actually did a start up and I learned that when you see something even if if people are quite ready to believe it’s possible you really have to go look at the physics and the physics of rock breaking with this technology actually are very sound fundamentals so once you understand the physics behind it I think that’s one as a as a technologist you understand pro business side you’ve got a you’ve got to hit it at the right time in the market works really happy the lan muskets made totaling look really cool because it is an important development I think that was the time when you start seeing this convergence of the need for aerospace applications everything hyper sonics they’re spending like a hundred fifty percent more every year now because the world thinks it’s getting behind the US is getting behind the Russian China and hyper sonic so you know over the last two years I’d say we’re actually seeing that our vision is moving into the future very cool

other technologies rather industries that this technology disrupts you know so again you know fundamentally were focused on tunneling today deep energy which allows us to early on work with conventional energy drillers to open up opportunities but really are our passion is clean deep geothermal energy anywhere we live on this planet that it’s you know this big and we can only today drill as thick as our phone now so this enables maybe twice the thickness of your thumbnail for you know a tenth the cost is so deep geothermal is where we’re going in the in in the mid term there’s also a really cool material science technology when you can take materials that are low cost and shock consolidate them into a much much so take a carbon based substance and turn it into more like an abrasive diamond those are the kind of technologies that are are possible for hyper sciences and we’re looking at well yeah

how do you go from Hey this we can do this to actually doing it yeah well you have to have a great team that understands how to bring it to market so we’re here in Austin and we’re in Texas with people who understand what drilling is all about they understand how you know this type of aerospace technology can be applied so folks like shell and others really worked with us and with great a great Austin based team here to do that energy development

what have you learned from the store part of any previous start up and also in this what what things have you learned you taking with you yeah I would say the number one thing is when you understand that you have a technology don’t blink generally the folks that they don’t get you are the people with the money to start with so don’t let the money part get you you know down the the point is if you clear with what you’re trying to make it simple for people to understand and for people to begin to buy your product so just simple example I actually did a ride Cher start up launched in Seattle before over so was it was this cool apps that two people could catch a ride together and pay each other fact they did actually mobile payments actually little tough at that time within had was PayPal and I went around to venture capitalists and they said are you kidding me you gonna put two people in a car that don’t know each other the lawsuits legal we paid to to all tell us we were wrong and they’re like no never gonna happen you know you’re better you’re violating federal law kicking to the airport and I actually you know said okay we’re we’re gonna take their advice and I slowed down I should have just laser beam focused and just done it anyway so that gives you the inside always to do is miss one over and you know the next time you won’t blank and blank I have been told this will be difficult but we’re at the point where we’re getting ready for commercialization

every start up that’s worthwhile in my experience is tough to get the zero zero yeah easy yeah somebody be doing already right so that’s what I find fascinating is at some point and correct me if I’m wrong their something here got that says this will work with only weeks of every single this will get you up every single day and to continue to push for on this well of him right now yeah it’s we’re at the point where we’ve been successful with our fundraising it has been again even this one we have this platform opportunity you can do tunneling you can do energy drilling we can change the paradigm for a deep geothermal and as I said transportation folks like venture capitalists say you can do only one thing with my money and that’s it so we didn’t blink we actually went out to a a crowd financing regulation a SEC filings and we were able to do our fundraising so it has been nonstop and I think as entrepreneurs if you’re gonna grow you’re always gonna be raising capital and growing a company so I think that’s the piece you know if you want to talk about the last few months we’ve been working pretty hard on that the technology is solid so it’s a matter of just the engineering

can you imagine someone telling you almost can only do one thing no I I feel like I usually get to do that still you know ultimately some people are extremely well capitalized for multiple things what we did is we went out and capitalized for the thing that we believe in and ultimately you have to go through a series of steps tunnel then drill for energy and then you can actually produce it with our geothermal plant but you have to go through a sequence the get you there and that’s what we’re doing and it’s step by step so I think I think folks like you almost can Jeff basis actually did the right things early that allow them the ability to do multiple things we just happen to have a platform technology instead of you know just one thing inside that platform

tell me what you see the future fibre science is the next five years where will you be so I think we’re gonna be well on our way to being an energy provider probably you know one of the larger geothermal providers and then ultimately geothermal energy anywhere and that would be an awesome view of the world where you can basically on wire energy discretized power plants you are a country that needs energy your standard of living depends on it and if you were not blessed with natural resources under your ground then what you have to go depend on somebody else here you can drill where you are tap into the energy in your standard of living so I think we’re gonna start enabling that about you know two to three years and I think that’s what will will you’re going to see us really really sparking the right now we’re gonna talk fast I mean we have you know contracts with shell coming up to deliver the drilling system we have others were in conversation with that should demonstrate tunneling super fast so I can’t tell you who they are yet but it’s pretty exciting as we can and media talks because I want to know I know the and that we will soon right we’re we’re again we’re this reggae filing we are very clear with what we can say when were pseudo public so it’s coming soon again

how will this change space so you know we’re not an orbital space company hyper sciences is enabling the opportune to fly with a a reduced stage or eliminate a stage one particularly in the atmosphere so other vehicles in the future will be able to take a ride and get up and then fly into orbit with us and with our partner companies so I think ultimately we’re going to see that right now we’re focused on the terrestrial side and in the future we’ll see about those partnerships for space flight clearly the passion for it but you know first things first let’s let’s fly millions of these projectiles that enable deep energy and the dollar

so I was curious about other industries that you think this will impact me we talked about the tunneling telling about space yes maybe also you see well you know I think again I with this all multibillion dollar industries and they are ripe for change mining when I go back to my roots right my father ran some of the largest silver golden copper mines in the world and I was just a kid from north Idaho that was you know punking around underground as a kid so it seemed natural to me here we are testing my grandfather’s old silver mine so we believe that and are talking to mining companies today very good size mining companies about using this technology to be much much safer than drawing a plastic today the technology is go in there with the drill either driven or hand run and then some guy comes in wires up explosives literally you walk out or run if you fire your thing and then you wait for the dust to clear it’s all just super sequence it’s it’s and it’s not the way the future you need an autonomous robotic system that delivers extremely safe energy right where you needed and you can digitally mind we can actually digitally mine the resource that they’re trying to extract a gold or platinum or copper silver and then you can take out the other rock and bring that and use that for construction for instance instead of mixing it all together and having to send it to that so it’s super efficient

I love love love that yeah it reminds me of you know when in fact the llamas yeah he looks at our current road systems that that’s like a hundred years yeah we haven’t changed well and you’re saying the same thing for me yeah it is it is it is we’re still doing dynamite yeah you reserve assistance for your doing what he wants doing and I mean great they’re they’re doing it off and beginning to do it autonomously and they’re shrinking their total sizes for cars and that’s that’s great but ultimately you’re just writing things together and really what we’re doing is saying we want that energy here here here and we’re using artificial intelligence with sensors and we’re was shell were running our tests with acoustic microphones distributed and we’re actually able to see the fractures in the rock and the troubles ahead so we get forward looking wrist sonar if you will a radar underground so we’re using all the tools because this is like a little microphone for you get to hear it the surface you know you hear anything but with the sensitive microphones strung out you’re able to actually see what’s going on that’s pretty exciting time for us

so what is the family think about of the firm’s been in mind well they’re they’re all they’re all in let me tell ya financially as well as you know motion only everybody’s in my wife’s fantastic proponent she’s been with me since then starting that was called that ago which is this to the seventies go right your program and then you know seen me get into the aerospace and the family mining side my dad you know my mom they third general I’m a third generation and they love it we’re testing in our own mining properties so everybody’s well behind it well

I love the fact that you took something that you were Mastro witches mining and been doing that for long engineering and the things that you were wetter aerospace probably please and you took all that time and energy and you turned into something that’s nonexistent that wasn’t existent that point yeah I mean now it’s like read something that’s new much more efficient helping other companies get to their projects much much faster so I I just think it’s such a wonderful wonderful idea and I can see why it’s giving so much lift from the crowd sourcing space and why you were calling you back in it’s not one of the things we just picked up the phone call well you know what’s what’s interesting here there’s two things one people can’t get in to Jeff Bezos private deals or into you on Moscow mean they have public deals that they can’t get into but some of these new things they just can’t so it’s an opportunity for entrepreneurs like us that our our repeat success but we’re now giving them you know the crowd an opportunity but I also have to tell you that it’s not all just me right it’s it’s a team it is this technology was invented by some professors at the university Washington we just commercialized and made it better and used our our space background to make it awesome so you know doctor Carl Nolan and partners like shell who believed in us early to take this forward so you know a big thanks to you know the team that actually is really behind hyper sciences from the financing to the university to you know show on our other corporate partners that are making it real for us missile invalidating it right I mean that’s everybody wants to see the real it’s only

recently moved to Austin so congratulations well thanks in Austin yeah yeah this this is where energies happening and I mean dynamic for all this kind of tech start ups here there’s an energy in Austin that’s a not present elsewhere particularly for the kind of things we’re trying to do the resource has this gets it Texas gets it we should

yeah well thanks for coming on I really wanted to share the story yeah we met a few weeks ago and I love the store my I’ve got to get it on Jim here what is happening and how your revolutionizing thing is thank you residential success so far and I know you’re going to go much further and we’ll be right there with you keep it up keeping tabs well thanks so much I mean I think we we have so many people to thank but yeah I asked you once you know what what was great about Austin one word was community and that’s what we found here so you know thank you we appreciate them thank you looking for like

mark said it once you’ve seen where your ideas can take you you do not want to miss out you can learn more about hyper sciences by visiting their website and seeing how they are using their technology to revolutionize the industry link is the episode description thank you again market for taking the time to speak with me and our listeners the masters and founders team includes me down to learn and producer Mariah costs and as always thank you to all the folks have been in Austin if you enjoy the show we ask that you share it with a family member or friend this week or maybe give us a five star rating wherever you listen your podcast it all helps thank you for listening