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POWERS

POWERS

By: Chris Powers
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Conversations with the best founders, entrepreneurs, and investors.2026 Economics Leadership Management & Leadership Personal Finance Politics & Government
Episodes
  • The Ex-SpaceX Engineer Reinventing the American Home with Riley Meik (#421)

    The Ex-SpaceX Engineer Reinventing the American Home with Riley Meik (#421)
    Jul 1 2026
    In this episode, Chris sits down with Riley Meik, co-founder and CEO of The American Housing Corporation, a company building factory-made row homes for the kind of city lots we've stopped building on. For 70 years we got great at putting single-family homes on the outskirts and basically quit building family-sized housing in the places people actually want to live. Riley's bet is that you fix that the way you'd fix any hard manufacturing problem: own the whole stack, design every part from first principles, and build the home in a factory. His first prototype went from manufactured to installed to finished in 13 weeks, and the goal from here is a home that costs 30 to 50% less than local construction. Timestamps: (00:00) Intro (01:22) The Housing Crisis Is a Production Problem (04:33) Why America Stopped Building Family Housing in Cities (09:50) The First Company and Why Selling to Home Builders Doesn't Work (14:58) First Principles Engineering: What Does a Wall Actually Need to Do? (21:39) Getting Code-Certified for a Building System That Doesn't Exist Yet (27:57) One Miracle at a Time (31:47) Three Entities, One Mission: How AHC's Capital Stack Works (37:52) 18 Months of R&D: Panel Install Time Dropped 70% (44:22) The Two-Week Build Goal (47:03) Eichler Homes and Designing for Young Families (52:24) Beautiful Housing Gets Approved: Design as Regulatory Strategy (1:00:08) Gigafactory Over Mobile Micro-Factory (1:04:40) Margin Targets, Market Selection, and the Coastal City Thesis (1:11:39) Earning the Right to Automate and Hiring for the Housing Crisis Find our sponsors: True North Advisors - https://truenorthadvisors.com Collateral Partners - https://collateral.com/powers Relay Human Cloud - https://www.relayhumancloud.com/powers Chris on Social Media: X: https://x.com/fortworthchris Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thepowerspodcast LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chrispowersjr/ Visit our website: https://www.powerspod.com/ Leave a review on Apple: https://bit.ly/45crFD0 Leave a review on Spotify: https://bit.ly/3Krl9jO
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    1 hr and 21 mins
  • How He Built a 2.5M-Follower Media Machine with Chris Koerner (#420)

    How He Built a 2.5M-Follower Media Machine with Chris Koerner (#420)
    Jun 23 2026
    In this episode, Chris Powers sits down with Chris Koerner, a serial entrepreneur and host of The Koerner Office - one of the fastest-growing business podcasts in the world. Koerner has gone all-in on media: 1.4M on Instagram, a 270k newsletter, and a YouTube channel he grew to 600k subscribers in a year. They get into how he cracked short-form, why he thinks attention is the only moat left once AI makes any business easy to build, and the filters he uses to decide what's actually worth starting. Then they go somewhere completely different - they talk in great detail about his experience as a missionary for the LDS Church. Koerner spent two years in Hungary, knocked on roughly 25,000 doors as a self-described introvert, and discusses the skills it taught him that made him a better businessman. Timestamps: (00:00) Intro (01:08) From Mobile Home Parks Tweeter to Business Media Juggernaut (09:38) Why Audio Builds More Loyal Followers Than Anything Else (12:21) Facebook's Hidden Creator Payouts — and Getting Shut Down Overnight (17:11) The Two-Pizza Company: Building a Lean Content Machine (23:36) From Impulse to Publication: How Content Moves Through the Factory (28:13) The YouTube Split That Unlocked the Algorithm (33:52) The Real Mission: Inspiring Strangers to Start a Business (37:37) Why People Don't Act Until They Hit Rock Bottom (40:03) Selling Religion Door to Door: The LDS Mission in Hungary (50:01) 25,000 Doors, 11 Baptisms: What Mass Rejection Really Teaches (56:53) Homecoming: The Most Depressing Day of His (1:06:53) Violence and Death in the Missionary Life Find our sponsors: Collateral Partners - https://collateral.com/fort Relay Human Cloud - https://www.relayhumancloud.com/powers/ Chris on Social Media: X: https://x.com/fortworthchris Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thepowerspodcast LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chrispowersjr/ Visit our website: https://www.powerspod.com/ Leave a review on Apple: https://bit.ly/45crFD0 Leave a review on Spotify: https://bit.ly/3Krl9jO
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    1 hr and 16 mins
  • The Business That's Selling Sunlight After Dark with Ben Nowack, CEO of Reflect Orbital (#419)

    The Business That's Selling Sunlight After Dark with Ben Nowack, CEO of Reflect Orbital (#419)
    Jun 16 2026
    In this episode, Chris sits down with Ben Nowack, co-founder and CEO of Reflect Orbital, one of the first companies building satellites that redirect sunlight from orbit to specific spots on Earth - with the goal of delivering sunlight on demand, 24/7. Why would you want sunlight 24/7? Agriculture and farming, construction projects, rescue missions, military operations, powering solar panels closer to 100% of the time instead of ~30%, etc. Ben started Reflect in 2021. He spent the first year in a garage, $60k in credit card debt, before a $350k raise came in. Reflect has now raised more than $35 million - Sequoia led the seed (its first space investment since SpaceX), Lux Capital led the $20M Series A - and launches its first satellite later this year. They discuss: - A speech Gwynne Shotwell gave during his tenure at SpaceX that he will never forget - What he learned while working at SpaceX that he implements at Reflect - The story of building the actual company and why building hardware is hard - How they think about vertical integration - The trillion $ business case for redirecting sunlight - How he recruits technical talent - what works and what doesn't Timestamps: (0:00) Intro (1:07) "Rockets Are Cool, But They're Not the Big Money Makers" (7:00) Lessons from SpaceX: What Ben Took (and Left Behind) (16:35) The Origin: From High School Fusion Reactors to Reflect Orbital (25:10) The Fossil Fuel Problem and Why It's So Hard to Beat (28:37) "By 3 AM You Have a Minimum Viable Financial Model" (35:44) The Breakthrough: Putting Mirrors in Space (41:00) Building the First Satellite (51:03) First Satellite and Seven-Figure Demand Nobody Expected (57:00) The Constellation Plan: 18 Satellites, Global Coverage (1:10:00) What It's Like to Order Sunlight (1:22:00) Why Fashion Designers Build Better Spacecraft Than JWST Engineers (1:25:36) The 10-Year Vision: Starship, Scale, and Powering the Earth Find our sponsors: Collateral Partners - https://collateral.com/fort Relay Human Cloud - https://www.relayhumancloud.com/powers/ Download FastJets: iOs: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/fastjets/id6756160345 Android: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.flyjetting.app Chris on Social Media: X: https://x.com/fortworthchris Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thepowerspodcast LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chrispowersjr/ Visit our website: https://www.powerspod.com/ Leave a review on Apple: https://bit.ly/45crFD0 Leave a review on Spotify: https://bit.ly/3Krl9jO
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    1 hr and 45 mins
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