1. Thesis: Most new space companies have been started with a huge initial investment by one person.
To prove or disprove this point, here is a list of companies that have and have not been started with a huge initial investment by one person.
A question that quickly arises when compiling this list is the following: How large is a "large investment"?
In any case, here's the list...
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Companies That DID Start
With Large Initial Investment
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Companies That DID NOT Start With Large Initial Investment
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Unknown Level of Initial Investment
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- Bigelow Aerospace
- Space Exploration (SpaceX)
- Blue Origin
- PlanetSpace
- Virgin Galactic
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- Scaled Composites - (although it *did* take a $25M check from Paul Allen before this company really made a run at the Ansari X PRIZE)
- Armadillo Aerospace - (John Carmack has put approx. $3M into the company, but he didn't invest it all up-front, but spread it out over the past 6+ years.)
- Masten Space Systems - (Founders and external angels have invested approximately $1.1 million to date, summer 2008)
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- XCOR
- Space Adventures
- Zero G Corp.
- Rocketplane
- t/Space
- Excalibur Almaz
- AirLaunch
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2. We need to find a way to start a business without such a large required initial investment so more people can get into the industry.
Thoughts?
Comments (3)
Michael Mealling said
at 11:22 pm on Jun 17, 2008
Well, its something the industry has been thinking about for a very long time. The best method anyone has come up with is go into some other industry (the Internet comes to mind), make a lot of money there and then use that to fund your new space startup. Until we start seeing M&A activity with large multiples its going to stay that way....
Ken Davidian said
at 11:33 pm on Jun 17, 2008
This is very analogous to what happened at the beginning of the aviation "industry" in the early 1900s... I think this page would be a good place to start a list... here I go!
Ken Davidian said
at 11:45 pm on Jun 17, 2008
I started the list of companies... I'm omitting a majority at this point, but it's late, and I'm relying on the power of group-think to make this list complete... Thanks!
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