Meet Arpan Rau | CEO of Outsail

We had the good fortune of connecting with Arpan Rau, CEO of Combinator backed climate startup Outsail, and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Arpan, we’d love to hear about how you approach risk and risk-taking
I think about risk a lot. In addition to running Outsail, my hardware startup, I fly paragliders. Paraglider pilots intentionally leap off the top of a mountain, suspending ourselves from an overgrown parachute, and navigate turbulence to cover distance. There’s significant risks involved.

In engineering principles, risk is about how likely it is something bad might happen, multiplied by how bad it could be. Managing risk is all about deciding when to accept the risk as it is, and when to do something to make it less likely or less bad.

On one hand, taking risks is good for learning. When I risk being wrong, especially when the consequences are not too serious, it helps me learn faster. I try not to let fear stop me from taking calculated risks, even when it means I might fail.

On the other hand, I know that nobody wins forever. If the consequences are so bad I won’t get to walk away, I do everything I can to lower the risk. For example, when I’m paragliding, I bring an extra parachute in case the main one has a problem. I also fly high enough so that if something goes wrong, I have time to use the backup parachute. It’s about finding the right balance between taking risks for learning and being careful when the stakes are permanent.

Can you give our readers an introduction to your business? Maybe you can share a bit about what you do and what sets you apart from others?
Outsail is dedicated to fighting climate change by enabling every ship to use wind power.

I grew up loving space, and let that obsession drive me. By the time I was 16, I was designing hardware for NASA, and by 18 I was working on flight structures at SpaceX. By 25, I was a product manager at Momentus, which was basically my aerospace dream job. I walked away from that to start Outsail.

Even though I was living my dream, it felt empty. Engineering is something that we do for people, and I couldn’t point to the person that my work had helped. I knew I needed to do something closer to home.

Climate change is really motivating to me. I think that it has the potential to really do a lot of harm, and I know we need to find better ways to move things without burning fuel.

As a paraglider pilot, I’m addicted to wind. There’s a part of my brain that’s always thinking about the wind speed and direction and measuring the strength of the current cycle as the strength increases and decreases. I started thinking about new ways to use that unlimited, clean energy.

I realized that a technology we were using in the aerospace world, the lenticular boom, could be adapted to deploy an airfoil, and that it would be a brand-new, better way of capturing wind energy. Like a sail, but autonomous and much more efficient.

Outsail’s goal is to put a deployable wingsail on every oceangoing vessel. There’s so much free, clean wind energy out on the oceans, and with our technology most ships could save tons of fuel.

We’re starting in yachting, because there are lots of yacht owners who want to experience the ocean without damaging it. Bering Yachts , who is super forward thinking in the space, partnered with us to launch an Outsail-equipped B60 catamaran concept this year!

It’s been an incredible journey so far, and I can’t wait to see where it takes me next.

Let’s say your best friend was visiting the area and you wanted to show them the best time ever. Where would you take them? Give us a little itinerary – say it was a week long trip, where would you eat, drink, visit, hang out, etc.
If a friend visits me for a week, we’re not heading to the city! I’d probably take them down to Kings Canyon and do some backpacking. There’s a ton of really beautiful nature within driving distance of the Bay Area, and I love having an excuse to get away from everything for a while.

My favorite area down there is a set of lakes called the Mosquito Lakes. They’re aptly named – don’t go during mosquito season. There are five lakes, each one higher than the last, that you can visit and camp by. The lowest ones are surrounded by beautiful forests, but as you get up the highest one’s you’re above the treeline. The water is blue and clear and the whole place is just beautiful.

It’s a day out and a day back, plus time to acclimate to the altitude, so for the rest of the time we might climb one of the other trails out of that trailhead. On some of the high trails in that area, the terrain starts to look less like earth and more like Mars. It’s incredibly barren and rocky and remote, and it’s something I think everyone should see in their lifetime.

The Shoutout series is all about recognizing that our success and where we are in life is at least somewhat thanks to the efforts, support, mentorship, love and encouragement of others. So is there someone that you want to dedicate your shoutout to?
My cofounders, Joseph and Bailey, have been absolutely essential to Outsail’s success.

Joseph is a brilliant engineer who’s always committed to doing things the right way. He’s got this physics-driven way of seeing the world where he can cut to the heart of a very complex problem and figure out the one part of it that really matters. A PHD Aerodynamicist, he’s the heart of the Outsail team, and is always driving us to find the right solution based on physical first principles. When Joseph looks into a problem and decides the right way forward, I can know we have the best of the possible solutions.

Bailey is a machine when it comes to moving the team forward and getting things done. I’m always worried about the big-picture vision, and Joseph is always worried about the math and physics and theory, but Bailey is able to navigate all that uncertainty, focus in, and execute. I’ll introduce Bailey to a problem and then stop thinking about it completely because I know it’ll be solved.

It’s awesome to work with people that are so capable. They’re the best team I could ask for.

Website: outsail.com

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/outsailtech

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/outsail-tech/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/outsailtech

Facebook: facebook.com/outsailtechnologies

Image Credits
Roll-out-solar-array : National Aeronautics and Space Administration