This is the founders series of the Blue Frontiers Podcast. Today we have Randy Hencken, managing director and co-founder of blue frontiers. In this podcast, Randy tells the story of all the previous seasteading attempts that were necessary to reach the point where we are now, after having signed an agreement with a national government to build the Floating Island Project.
Introduction to Randy & Seasteading [00:00]
Randy Hencken is the co-founder and managing director of Blue Frontiers as well as managing director of the seasteading institute which is the non-profit company that is building the floating island project. Randy started in 2011 and within a year became the executive director and for complicated, legal reasons – is now the managing director.
Seasteading is a plan to develop new communities, new cities and new nations at sea that float and are modular, can grow organically and allow people opportunities to explore new forms of society that cannot exist in land based communities.
Birth of the name for “Blue Frontiers” and it being a non-profit [03:20]
Nathalie and Randy talk about “Blue Frontiers” being a non-profit that has somehow gotten funding despite the large sums of money required for the project. They explain that the name “Blue Frontiers was thought of by another co-founder Ian Raijicov who wanted to stress the opportunity the sea possesses.
Peter Thiel [14:04]
Randy explains that Peter Thiel is the man that invested the initial funding but it is not his only investment – Peter has invested in hundreds if not thousands of projects and he is the ultimate venture capitalist.
..and in 2008 a friend of Peter’s invited Patrick to come over for lunch and tell Peter about sea setting and at that meeting Peter said this is a great idea I want you to pursue it and he pulled out his cheque book and gave Patrick a $500 000 cheque and said I want you a non-profit and explore whether seasteading could be a reality or not (16:30)
Club Stead [08:24]
Randy mentions that it has been nine years since the seasteading institute was created and briefly alludes to Blue Sea – another project that’s a part of Club Stead. Blue Sea was a project that was canceled due to its exorbitant costs required to build a submersible hotel that would float steadily off the coast of Southern California.
Well to construct one alone is going to be about a hundred and but about 200 million dollars to build it and you have to do operations of it and then you would have to anchor it and then you would have to you know maintain it and oil rigs are made to last for about 20 years before they come out the sea you know rust out so yeah [10:40]
Seasteading events and parties! [11:10]
The Seasteading Institute started an event back in 2009 or 2010 – a party to encourage the future of seasteading and basically get people excited about seasteading. He explains that the idea was to start small up in Sacramento delta – get a bunch of plie woods and barrels that construct floating platforms together! The platforms would then eventually come out to the San Francisco bay and move into the open ocean. For a long weekend party – people dressed up like pirates etc.
They discuss that event is still happening to this day. People actually own big giant barges that they rebuild and change every year – the whole thing is very interesting, actually. You could even get your own silent island with no music or go to the party island if you’re into that kind of stuff! There was also even a casino! It is indescribably fascinating how such an amazing thing is yet to be explored by a big chunk of people.
Randy’s decision to start focusing on international waters [15:15]
Nathalie and Randy discuss the Charter City movement. It’s a start-up-city movement and the idea for this movement is that they give you a section of land and you can import new rules on it. I’ve seen people get really attached to their land and believe in it with great aspirations. But t
