Gerard Barron

He was the second employee there.

And he was telling me about it.

And I said, man, that sounds amazing.

He said, yeah, and we've got no money.

Can you put some money in?

It's like, I mean, I was building my own company at the time.

But I was like, yeah, yeah, of course, of course.

Well, because I thought it was such an obvious idea, and they were focused on a different type of metals.

They were focused on seafloor massive sulfides, which is where the chimneys pop up between the tectonic plates.

Anyway, so I agreed to fund the first $1.5 million, and it worked.

Despite it almost sending me broke at the time, because I was building another company as well at the same time, which needed money, it ended up being a great success.

And we floated the company in 2006, and I sold out in 2007, 2008, pretty well the same time my friend left the company.

But I never worked for it.

But I was very helpful in attracting other capital.

And then the big guys came in.

We raised $400 million, $500 million.

And then, of course, after I sold out, Papua New Guinea, the country, in 2012 maybe, decided they wanted to invest as well because they were focused on a project up in Papua New Guinea.

And by law, the government has the right to invest.

So they said, we want to invest.

So they did.