Sourcery

Tom Mueller, Founder, CEO and CTO of Impulse Space, (aka Employee #1 at SpaceX) gives Sourcery a walkthrough of the company's Redondo Beach factory, from the avionics clean room to a live rocket engine firing in the vacuum chamber.

As SpaceX's founding employee, Tom led development of the engines for Falcon and Dragon and started the origins of what became Starship. His proudest project, the Merlin engine, still flies Falcon 9. In this episode he explains why he left to build the next layer of space infrastructure: moving payloads and cargo around once they're in orbit.

We tour Mira (the company's precision maneuvering spacecraft), Helios (the vehicle bringing same-day delivery to space), and the Deneb engine, and get into how Impulse designs and builds: extreme vertical integration, 3D-printed engines, in-house composite tanks, and a "build, test, iterate" loop.

Tom also shares where he thinks the industry is heading, on nuclear electric propulsion, data centers in space, the return to the Moon, and what it was like to work with Elon Musk.

Tom Mueller: https://x.com/lrocket 
Molly O’Shea: https://x.com/MollySOShea 
Sourcery: ⁠https://x.com/sourceryy 

𝐄𝐏𝐈𝐒𝐎𝐃𝐄 𝐋𝐈𝐍𝐊𝐒
YouTube: https://youtu.be/WIORHdlPWAI

𝐒𝐏𝐎𝐍𝐒𝐎𝐑𝐒
• Brex—The modern finance platform, combining the world’s smartest corporate card with integrated expense management, banking, bill pay, & travel. https://brex.com/sourcery 
• Turing—Turing delivers top-tier talent, data, and tools to help AI labs improve model performance—and enables enterprises to turn those models into powerful, production-ready systems. https://turing.com/sourcery 
• VCX—VCX is the public ticker for private tech, allowing investors of all sizes to invest in venture capital. View The Portfolio at http://GetVCX.com  
• Deel—Deel is the global people platform that helps startups hire, manage, pay, and equip anyone, anywhere. Trusted by more than 35,000 fast-growing companies, Deel is the people platform that just works, so teams can scale without the chaos. Visit: https://www.deel.com/sourcery
• Public–Investing platform Public just launched Generated Assets, which lets you turn any idea into an investable index with AI. With Generated Assets, you can build, backtest, refine, and invest in any thesis with AI. Gone are the days of one-size-fits-all ETFs. https://public.com/sourcery 
• Merge—The leading provider of customer-facing integrations and agentic tools for frontier LLMs, Fortune 500 organizations, and B2B SaaS companies. Visit https://merge.dev  
Follow Sourcery for the latest updates!
https://www.sourcery.vc
Disclosure
Paid Endorsement. Brokerage services by Open to the Public Investing Inc, member FINRA & SIPC. Advisory services by Public Advisors LLC, SEC-registered adviser. Crypto trading provided by Zero Hash LLC, licensed by the NYSDFS. Generated Assets is an interactive analysis tool by Public Advisors. Output is for informational purposes only and is not an investment recommendation or advice. See disclosures at public.com/disclosures/ga. Matched funds must remain in your account for at least 5 years. Match rate and other terms are subject to change at any time.

𝐓𝐈𝐌𝐄𝐒𝐓𝐀𝐌𝐏𝐒
(00:00) Tom Mueller, Founder, CEO & CTO of Impulse Space
(00:49) Inside Impulse Space
(02:32) Avionics Bay floor
(02:59) Building rockets at home
(03:50) Mira and Helios
(08:00) Why he left SpaceX
(09:33) The Deneb Engine walkthrough
(11:42) Testing in Mojave
(12:23) Favorite part of the Engine
(13:30) How it's 3D Printed
(14:21) Why 3D Printing changes everything
(16:54) Finding Talent for COPVs
(17:28) No Modern hardware without software
(19:52) The Mill Turn explained
(22:42) Payload Deck Design
(25:28) Entering the Secret Area
(30:48) Thrust, Flow Rate, and 100 Sensors
(32:13) Collision avoidance in Orbit
(32:57) The Electric Propulsion Chamber
(34:28) Nuclear Electric is the future
(38:49) Data Centers in Space
(40:28) SpaceX and Starlink's Growth
(41:10) Working with Elon

Eric Romo, President & COO of Impulse Space, joins Sourcery on the company's manufacturing floor in Redondo Beach to break down the freshly closed $500M Series D co-led by 137 Ventures and BANNER VC that pushes Impulse past $1 billion raised.
We get into what the capital actually unlocks (hiring and production, not flashy CapEx), why "space tug" doesn’t cut it for Mira, and how a single successful flight spurred demand from across the industry. Eric explains Impulse's three products — Mira, Helios, Caravan — and makes the case for staged access to GEO against traditional options.
He also gets candid: reality on orbital debris cleanup, why Impulse is "closer to a fighter jet than a tugboat," and the hard lesson from his SpaceX days (he was employee #13; CEO Tom Mueller was #1) that made in-housing manufacturing non-negotiable.

Eric Romo: https://x.com/_Eric_Romo 
Molly O’Shea: https://x.com/MollySOShea 
Sourcery: ⁠https://x.com/sourceryy 

𝐄𝐏𝐈𝐒𝐎𝐃𝐄 𝐋𝐈𝐍𝐊𝐒
YouTube: https://youtu.be/42035XPxgbA

𝐒𝐏𝐎𝐍𝐒𝐎𝐑𝐒
• Brex—The modern finance platform, combining the world’s smartest corporate card with integrated expense management, banking, bill pay, & travel. https://brex.com/sourcery 
• Turing—Turing delivers top-tier talent, data, and tools to help AI labs improve model performance—and enables enterprises to turn those models into powerful, production-ready systems. https://turing.com/sourcery 
• VCX—VCX is the public ticker for private tech, allowing investors of all sizes to invest in venture capital. View The Portfolio at http://GetVCX.com  
• Deel—Deel is the global people platform that helps startups hire, manage, pay, and equip anyone, anywhere. Trusted by more than 35,000 fast-growing companies, Deel is the people platform that just works, so teams can scale without the chaos. Visit: https://www.deel.com/sourcery
• Public–Investing platform Public just launched Generated Assets, which lets you turn any idea into an investable index with AI. With Generated Assets, you can build, backtest, refine, and invest in any thesis with AI. Gone are the days of one-size-fits-all ETFs. https://public.com/sourcery 
• Merge—The leading provider of customer-facing integrations and agentic tools for frontier LLMs, Fortune 500 organizations, and B2B SaaS companies. Visit https://merge.dev  
Follow Sourcery for the latest updates!
https://www.sourcery.vc

Disclosure
Paid Endorsement. Brokerage services by Open to the Public Investing Inc, member FINRA & SIPC. Advisory services by Public Advisors LLC, SEC-registered adviser. Crypto trading provided by Zero Hash LLC, licensed by the NYSDFS. Generated Assets is an interactive analysis tool by Public Advisors. Output is for informational purposes only and is not an investment recommendation or advice. See disclosures at public.com/disclosures/ga. Matched funds must remain in your account for at least 5 years. Match rate and other terms are subject to change at any time.

𝐓𝐈𝐌𝐄𝐒𝐓𝐀𝐌𝐏𝐒
(00:00) Eric Romo, President & COO at Impulse Space
(00:58) Fueling the next phase with a $500M Series D
(04:30) Crossing the $1B funding mark
(06:00) The freedom to execute
(07:09) Why startups die from indigestion
(08:30) Building beyond SpaceX
(13:32) How defense became the real opportunity
(16:19) Impulse’s product stack: Mira, Helios & Caravan 
(23:43) The economics of urgency
(26:23) "Closer to a fighter jet than a tugboat"
(30:40) The new era of space defense
(37:33) The SpaceX DNA at Impulse
(38:27) The biggest lesson from SpaceX
(44:23) Hiring world class engineers
(45:38) If not COO, then what?
(46:43) The road to first Helios launch

Merge co-founders Shensi Ding (CEO) and Gil Feig (CTO) join Sourcery for a wide-ranging conversation on building AI infrastructure that quietly powers some of the biggest companies in tech — including OpenAI, Perplexity, Netflix, Uber, Mistral, and Dropbox.
They break down Merge's three-product suite (Unified, Agent Handler, and Gateway), the make-or-break month that pushed them to rebuild around AI, and why they now believe "English is your programming language." Gil gets candid on the state of AI security — supply chain attacks, agentic code flooding GitHub, and why the scariest threat is always internal. Shensi shares hard-won hiring philosophy (missionaries vs. mercenaries), her admiration for Benioff and the "beginner's mind," and a hot take on companies over-engineering their own models.
Plus: the SaaSpocalypse, the brutal reality of token-maxxing bills, governing employee AI access, headless Salesforce, and whether today's AI valuations make any sense at all.

Shensi Ding: https://x.com/shensi
Gil Feig: https://x.com/GilFeig 
Molly O’Shea: https://x.com/MollySOShea 
Sourcery: ⁠https://x.com/sourceryy 

𝐄𝐏𝐈𝐒𝐎𝐃𝐄 𝐋𝐈𝐍𝐊𝐒
YouTube: https://youtu.be/SjrejHEAdeg

𝐒𝐏𝐎𝐍𝐒𝐎𝐑𝐒
• Brex—The modern finance platform, combining the world’s smartest corporate card with integrated expense management, banking, bill pay, & travel. https://brex.com/sourcery 
• Turing—Turing delivers top-tier talent, data, and tools to help AI labs improve model performance—and enables enterprises to turn those models into powerful, production-ready systems. https://turing.com/sourcery 
• VCX—VCX is the public ticker for private tech, allowing investors of all sizes to invest in venture capital. View The Portfolio at http://GetVCX.com  
• Deel—Deel is the global people platform that helps startups hire, manage, pay, and equip anyone, anywhere. Trusted by more than 35,000 fast-growing companies, Deel is the people platform that just works, so teams can scale without the chaos. Visit: https://www.deel.com/sourcery
• Public–Investing platform Public just launched Generated Assets, which lets you turn any idea into an investable index with AI. With Generated Assets, you can build, backtest, refine, and invest in any thesis with AI. Gone are the days of one-size-fits-all ETFs. https://public.com/sourcery 
• Merge—The leading provider of customer-facing integrations and agentic tools for frontier LLMs, Fortune 500 organizations, and B2B SaaS companies. Visit https://merge.dev  
Follow Sourcery for the latest updates!
https://www.sourcery.vc

Disclosure
Paid Endorsement. Brokerage services by Open to the Public Investing Inc, member FINRA & SIPC. Advisory services by Public Advisors LLC, SEC-registered adviser. Crypto trading provided by Zero Hash LLC, licensed by the NYSDFS. Generated Assets is an interactive analysis tool by Public Advisors. Output is for informational purposes only and is not an investment recommendation or advice. See disclosures at public.com/disclosures/ga. Matched funds must remain in your account for at least 5 years. Match rate and other terms are subject to change at any time.
 
𝐓𝐈𝐌𝐄𝐒𝐓𝐀𝐌𝐏𝐒
(00:00) Shensi Ding & Gil Feig, Co-Founders at Merge
(01:04) Three products. One big bet
(03:20) How Merge made the AI pivot
(04:42) The Classic Innovator’s Dilemma
(05:58) Building culture around AI
(07:10) The leverage nobody’s talking about
(08:52) Codex vs Claude Code
(09:15) The scale nobody knew about
(09:47) SaaS, Finance, and the Biggest AI Labs
(10:46) Why AI companies buy differently
(12:04) What AI sales actually looks like
(13:04) The Fastest sales cycles in the market
(14:35) Why is Cybersecurity broken
(15:59) Merge's solution to agent security
(19:16) Mythos, Wiz, and the GitHub Hack
(22:34) 1,000 Bot signups in one hour
(23:23) Real reason companies pay ransom to hackers
(25:43) The State of AI Infrastructure Costs
(26:41) Internal AI Governance is the next big problem

Jackie Reses has quietly done what almost no one in finance has pulled off — she's been a Goldman Sachs banker, a private equity partner at Apax, Yahoo's Chief Development Officer, Executive Chairman of Square Financial Services, a board member at Alibaba, Affirm, and Nubank, and now the founder and CEO of Lead Bank, the $1.5B fintech infrastructure company quietly powering Stripe, Ramp, Walmart, Affirm, Revolut, and over 100 crypto companies.
In this episode, Jackie sits down with Molly to share the untold stories behind her improbable career — from sitting in Alibaba board meetings with Jack Ma, Joe Tsai, and Masa Son, to brokering one of the largest value-recovery deals in corporate history for Yahoo, to running Square Capital after a 72-hour hackweek project.
She also gets candid about the hype around "de-banking," what it's really like inside the White House (her brother is VP JD Vance's Chief of Staff), how she built Lead Bank to $280M in revenue with zero sales team, and why the future of financial infrastructure is programmable, on-chain, and AI-native.
Whether you're a founder, operator, investor, or just curious about how the most powerful in American fintech actually work behind the scenes — this conversation is a masterclass.

Jacqueline Reses: https://x.com/jackiereses 
Molly O’Shea: https://x.com/MollySOShea 
Sourcery: ⁠https://x.com/sourceryy 

𝐄𝐏𝐈𝐒𝐎𝐃𝐄 𝐋𝐈𝐍𝐊𝐒
YouTube: https://youtu.be/0rwmXUnn7Tc

𝐒𝐏𝐎𝐍𝐒𝐎𝐑𝐒
• Brex—The modern finance platform, combining the world’s smartest corporate card with integrated expense management, banking, bill pay, & travel. https://brex.com/sourcery 
• Turing—Turing delivers top-tier talent, data, and tools to help AI labs improve model performance—and enables enterprises to turn those models into powerful, production-ready systems. https://turing.com/sourcery 
• VCX—VCX is the public ticker for private tech, allowing investors of all sizes to invest in venture capital. View The Portfolio at http://GetVCX.com  
• Deel—Deel is the global people platform that helps startups hire, manage, pay, and equip anyone, anywhere. Trusted by more than 35,000 fast-growing companies, Deel is the people platform that just works, so teams can scale without the chaos. Visit: https://www.deel.com/sourcery
• Public–Investing platform Public just launched Generated Assets, which lets you turn any idea into an investable index with AI. With Generated Assets, you can build, backtest, refine, and invest in any thesis with AI. Gone are the days of one-size-fits-all ETFs. https://public.com/sourcery 
• Merge—The leading provider of customer-facing integrations and agentic tools for frontier LLMs, Fortune 500 organizations, and B2B SaaS companies. Visit https://merge.dev  
Follow Sourcery for the latest updates!
https://www.sourcery.vc
Disclosure
Paid Endorsement. Brokerage services by Open to the Public Investing Inc, member FINRA & SIPC. Advisory services by Public Advisors LLC, SEC-registered adviser. Crypto trading provided by Zero Hash LLC, licensed by the NYSDFS. Generated Assets is an interactive analysis tool by Public Advisors. Output is for informational purposes only and is not an investment recommendation or advice. See disclosures at public.com/disclosures/ga. Matched funds must remain in your account for at least 5 years. Match rate and other terms are subject to change at any time.

𝐓𝐈𝐌𝐄𝐒𝐓𝐀𝐌𝐏𝐒
(00:00) Jacqueline Reses, CEO of Lead Bank
(01:06) The swiss army knife of Silicon Valley
(02:46) Inside the Alibaba boardroom with Jack Ma and Masa
(05:23) Being one of the only Americans on Alibaba’s board
(10:29) What Jack Ma and Masayoshi Son are really like
(12:32) The biggest lessons Jackie learned from Alibaba
(15:12) From Goldman Sachs to Silicon Valley
(17:44) Why Yahoo hired a PE investor to run HR
(22:53) Yahoo was a hot mess
(25:33) The deal that recovered billions for Yahoo
(26:31) How Jack Dorsey recruited Jackie to Square

Michel Del Buono, Chief Investment Officer of a16z Perennial (Andreessen Horowitz's multi-family office), returns to Sourcery for a deep dive into pre-liquidity event planning. 
Yes. You can earn a billion dollars.
With the SpaceX IPO on the horizon and massive secondary activity around Anthropic, OpenAI, Stripe, and Anduril, Michel breaks down the three pillars of wealth optimization: trust & estate structuring, tax-advantaged investment strategies, and philanthropy.
In this conversation, Michel and Molly cover QSBS stacking, the difference between L1, L2, and L3 SPV structures, the hidden risks in today's secondary market, the BDC liquidity gate situation, tax loss harvesting vs. trust strategies, real assets and depreciation, AI's impact on private equity, and why most founders show up to their liquidity event unprepared.
Whether you're a founder approaching IPO, an early employee considering a tender, or just want to understand how the ultra-wealthy actually structure their balance sheets — this episode is essential listening.
We cover:
Pre-liquidity event planning

QSBS stacking strategies

Secondary market SPV risks

Trust & estate structuring

BDC liquidity gates

Tax loss harvesting

Real assets & depreciation

Michel Del Buono: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mdelbuono
Molly O’Shea: https://x.com/MollySOShea 
Sourcery: ⁠https://x.com/sourceryy 

𝐄𝐏𝐈𝐒𝐎𝐃𝐄 𝐋𝐈𝐍𝐊𝐒
YouTube: https://youtu.be/U_Ia9xKL0vI

𝐒𝐏𝐎𝐍𝐒𝐎𝐑𝐒
• Brex—The modern finance platform, combining the world’s smartest corporate card with integrated expense management, banking, bill pay, & travel. https://brex.com/sourcery
• Turing—Turing partners with frontier AI labs to improve model capabilities in coding, reasoning, tool use, & multimodality, as well as with Fortune 500 enterprises to build & deploy end-to-end agentic AI systems in mission-critical workflows Visit: turing.com/sourcery
• VCX—VCX is the public ticker for private tech, allowing investors of all sizes to invest in venture capital. Learn more at http://GetVCX.com 
• Deel—Deel is the global people platform that helps startups hire, manage, pay, and equip anyone, anywhere. Trusted by more than 35,000 fast-growing companies, Deel is the people platform that just works, so teams can scale without the chaos. Visit: https://www.deel.com/sourcery
• Public–Investing platform Public just launched Generated Assets, which lets you turn any idea into an investable index with AI. With Generated Assets, you can build, backtest, refine, and invest in any thesis with AI. Gone are the days of one-size-fits-all ETFs. https://public.com/sourcery
• Merge—The leading provider of customer-facing integrations and agentic tools for frontier LLMs, Fortune 500 organizations, and B2B SaaS companies. Visit https://merge.dev 
Follow Sourcery for the latest updates!
https://www.sourcery.vc/

Disclosure
Paid Endorsement. Brokerage services by Open to the Public Investing Inc, member FINRA & SIPC. Advisory services by Public Advisors LLC, SEC-registered adviser. Crypto trading provided by Zero Hash LLC, licensed by the NYSDFS. Generated Assets is an interactive analysis tool by Public Advisors. Output is for informational purposes only and is not an investment recommendation or advice. See disclosures at public.com/disclosures/ga. Matched funds must remain in your account for at least 5 years. Match rate and other terms are subject to change at any time.
 
𝐓𝐈𝐌𝐄𝐒𝐓𝐀𝐌𝐏𝐒
(00:00) Michel Del Buono, CIO at a16z Perennial
(01:05) The Billionaire office playbook
(02:57) Why founders lose millions to taxes
(07:55) The massive QSBS tax advantage
(11:48) The biggest mistake founders make
(12:32) Should you sell your company stock?
(14:28) Why everyone wants pre IPO shares
(17:36) The hidden risk in SPVs
(19:57) Understanding carry fees
(22:53) The SPV operator who vanished
(24:33) The private credit problem
(28:38) Why endowments are pulling back