Rocket Cargo Anywhere In 15 Minutes. The U.S. Air Force Is In. | Matija Milenovic, Hop Aero (YC S26)

Matija had 24 hours to get a satellite propulsion system across the world. FedEx couldn't guarantee it. UPS couldn't either. So he got on a plane and delivered it himself. 23 hours, round trip. Jacob, his co-founder, hit the same wall from a different direction. He was a marine during Typhoon Haiyan, tasked with getting life-saving supplies of medicine and food to people fast. Aircraft kept breaking down, parts weren't in stock, pilots were exhausted. The supplies got there late. Different problems, same wall: nothing fast enough existed. Not for a startup, not for the US military. So they built it. Hop Aero builds autonomous hypersonic cargo rockets. 250 kg, up to 750 km, in about 15 minutes. Most urgent logistics still runs through airports, runways, slow last-mile handoffs, or cargo sitting in orbit waiting for a window. Hop Aero's bet is simpler: launch from a 40-foot shipping container, fly point-to-point through a suborbital arc, land vertically on ground that was never built for landing. In this episode, Nihal Kurth sits down with Matija Milenovic, co-founder and CEO of Hop Aero. They get into why time-critical logistics breaks down in both military and commercial settings, how a prototype catching fire turned into the real test of a co-founder relationship, and why Hop Aero optimizes for door-to-door speed instead of just flight speed. They also cover why drones fail at long-range contested logistics, how Ukraine changed the cost and availability of autonomy hardware, why Hop Aero built its own internal engineering system, Hop OS, and what it actually takes to build a defense hardware company in the US instead of Europe. Learn more about Matija:https://deeptech-decoded.com/guests/matija-milenovic Chapters: 00:00 - Intro00:45 - From porkchop to Hop Aero04:52 - The prototype fire that tested the co-founders08:01 - Jacob's Marine Corps origin story09:46 - The 23-hour delivery run14:06 - How point-to-point rocket cargo works19:34 - Launching from a 40-foot shipping container21:23 - Autonomy lessons from Ukraine23:35 - 3D printed engines and Hop OS28:53 - Build vs buy in hard tech31:15 - Supplier failures and startup reality34:40 - Why drones are not enough39:15 - The cost curve for rocket cargo40:34 - Team grit as the real moat42:37 - Co-founder dynamics under pressure46:09 - Door-to-door speed as the core metric47:21 - Orbital cargo vs direct launch50:11 - Working with Air Force Research Labs51:14 - Scaling production and reusability52:19 - Why Hop Aero tests in Oklahoma55:28 - Building defense hardware in the U.S. vs Europe58:09 - Why porkchop sold its IP1:01:00 - Advice for young founders1:05:07 - The consensus bet that failed1:07:05 - Closing