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Space Companies at Y Combinator
- csteubs 5y agoAlways great seeing new companies in the space... space. Eager to see if these startups will end up standing on their own or become no-brainer acquisition targets for the incumbents. I think the outlook is good in general.
- ianvorbach 5y agoGood point! The companies that were the "new" players 10 years ago are now so well capitalized that they're acquiring the current wave of startups. Astra acquiring Apollo Fusion and SpaceX acquiring Swarm being great examples. We'll probably see a lot more of that in the near future.
- csteubs 5y agoSpace-adjacent seems like a subcategory that will eventually fall under the "space" umbrella as well. There's a massive amount of terrestrial infrastructure (digital and physical) that will be needed to facilitate all the upcoming orbital activity. Services like constellation management, procurement, pad construction, material handling, etc., will all likely count startups among their ranks in large numbers. All that to say nothing of "actual" space tech. There are certain bottlenecks that have developed based on our use of space in the last half century as well. I'm definitely biased here (working on such a problem), but abstracting some of our space-based capabilities to other existing and established formats will free up some much needed room and support bigger endeavors. It is and will continue to be a very complementary industry IMO.
- ianvorbach 5y agoAbsolutely agree! Infrastructure, data layers, analytics on top of the data. Plus all of the challenges around space situational awareness, traffic management, etc. I wrote a newsletter a few months ago about the needs that arise from these challenges called The Rise of the Satellite Mega Constellation if you're interested in my thoughts on that: https://spacedotbiz.substack.com/p/the-rise-of-the-satellite-mega-constellation https://spacedotbiz.substack.com/p/the-rise-of-the-satellite...
- jcims 5y agoI can't wait till 'heavy industry' is included in that list. :)
- ianvorbach 5y agoHopefully sooner rather than later!
- pwnOrbitals 5y agoI'd like to interject this shameless for our space propulsion company : https://gamaspace.com/ https://gamaspace.com/. Solar sails for cheap interplanetary travel !
- ianvorbach 5y agoAppreciate you sharing!
- llcrabtree 5y agoVery cool! Would love to learn more about what you're working on!!
- pwnOrbitals 5y agoWe're currently finishing the design of our first mission, GAMA Alpha, a 6-unit cubesat with a planned sail size of 100 meters square and the best performance of any launched solar sail (area / mass ratio of about 10). LEO launch next year to demonstrate deployment. We don't do much comms as we're fully focused on getting something to space and making it work before we sell the product :)
- chrisMyzel 5y agoI’d show something real on the site - like the even shittiest prototype would make the web presence more believable - getting to your site makes me enjoy your idea but I don’t see real people working on something, I don’t believe you’d been able to help me since I’m just immersed in a story without a product
- pwnOrbitals 5y agoThank you for the feedback. We have a lot to show, so I'll see what we can include ;)
- jordandolier 5y agoGreat read, quite relevant to today’s changing space landscape from both a business and engineering perspective.
- sablemilgrew 5y agoI’m curious about the longer term implications of what this article means for space start ups.
- jacobchoi 5y agogreat article!
- droctoteacher 5y agoBarriers are the opposition to innovation, looking forward to see what this does to expand space entrepreneurship.
- derekjdanserl 5y agoI believe you meant to say “opposition is the barrier to innovation.”
- blamazon 5y agoWishing the best to these teams!
- nawgz 5y agoSo many positive, new accounts have arrived to comment on this article. What a pleasant community. It’s so great to see it grow so organically on this article.
- bpodgursky 5y agoIf people are going to astroturf, I'd rather it was for cool space tech rather than SEO tips.
- dang 5y agoI've killed those comments now.
- d_silin 5y agoShameless plug of our space company (we applied 4 times to YC, btw): https://www.exodusorbitals.com https://www.exodusorbitals.com
- unixhero 5y agoVery cool, what about publishing a pricing page? Or is it free?
- ianvorbach 5y agoThanks for sharing!
- chrisMyzel 5y agoWell…Space is decided upon by C-Level Execs whereas your website for example speaks to developers. Try speaking space and list some real advantages.
- 3pt14159 5y agoHey fellow Torontonian! I know people in the OSINT / Arms Control space and they'd probably be interested in something like this, but without a pricing page or API documentation I can't really vet what's possible with your company.
- Communitivity 5y agoThis is a cool idea. I agree with earlier comments though, marketing to C suite level will get you farther I'd think for this kind of venture. Also, the cybersecurity implications are interesting. For example, if malware rooted the satellite, what protections would be there to clean the system and reboot. Root enough satellites and maybe you could launch a DDoS on anything nearby in space (I don't know, I know very little about space).
- staunch 5y agoI know it's not a new idea but it seems like the time has probably come for there to be a YC Space, YC SaaS, YC Edu, etc. YC should seriously consider going one level of abstraction up. Instead of YC being an investment firm that creates startups, it should be an investment firm that creates investment firms. A space-focused YC could probably be a lot better than a generic YC. It would undoubtedly source and fund more than 5 space startups in a 375 company batch, for example.
- forgotmysn 5y agothere are plenty of niche accelerators. the startburst acceleartor focuses exclusively on space and aerospace startups.
- ianvorbach 5y agoTrue! A couple other popular space accelerators that come to mind are the Seraphim/AWS Space Accelerator and Creative Destruction Lab.
- yaseer 5y agoWe were YC W21. Most of the value in YC comes from the network. We learn a lot from other founders, even if the industry is completely removed. Also, the batches are now large, but you're often grouped with similar companies during the batch. There's also sub-groups that organically form after the batch, which effectively achieves this goal. We're in groups for developer tools, chrome extensions and YC London startups. It makes sense to not fragment the overall YC network, whilst allowing close groupings based on sector or Geography to just form organically.
- llcrabtree 5y ago+1 as the YC community is amazing!
- bagels 5y agoAmazing opportunities created by SpaceX smashing launch costs and driving up launch frequency.
- ianvorbach 5y agoPlus in educating a new generation of engineers in how to build great space technology in a scrappy way. Really started with SpaceX
- Robotbeat 5y agoWorth pointing out that SpaceX in turn learned a lot of that from Armadillo Aerospace and Masten Space Systems.
- carabiner 5y agolol SpaceX, or anyone for that matter, didn't learn shit from Armadillo. AA was bunch of hacks doing garage projects, they were never close to commercializing anything and were more like Mythbusters-esque group having fun than professional engineers. Don't know about Masten. SpaceX did receive a shitload of handholding from NASA at the start before outpacing them.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- imglorp 5y agoTim Dodd's interview with Musk revealed there is actually a method to the madness. Tim's summary: Make the requirements less dumb. The requirements are definitely dumb; it does not matter who gave them to you. He notes that it’s particularly dangerous if an intelligent person gives you the requirements, as you may not question the requirements enough. “Everyone’s wrong. No matter who you are, everyone is wrong some of the time.” He further notes that “all designs are wrong, it’s just a matter of how wrong.” Try very hard to delete the part or process. If parts are not being added back into the design at least 10% of the time, not enough parts are being deleted. Musk noted that the bias tends to be very strongly toward “let’s add this part or process step in case we need it.” Additionally, each required part and process must come from a name, not a department, as a department cannot be asked why a requirement exists, but a person can. Simplify and optimize the design. This is step three as the most common error of a smart engineer is to optimize something that should not exist. Accelerate cycle time. Musk states “you’re moving too slowly, go faster! But don’t go faster until you’ve worked on the other three things first.” Automate. An important part of this is to remove in-process testing after the problems have been diagnosed; if a product is reaching the end of a production line with a high acceptance rate, there is no need for in-process testing. https://everydayastronaut.com/starbase-tour-and-interview-with-elon-musk/ https://everydayastronaut.com/starbase-tour-and-interview-wi...
- DrNuke 5y ago> What It Means for the Space Industry I am playing the devil’s advocate and writing that the main issue is materials materials materials, ala Steve Ballmer’s developers developers developers?! So that all these five startups seem just ancillary or toooooo long a shot (imho).
- ianvorbach 5y agoHaving trouble following. Interested in hearing more if you'd be willing to expand!
- DrNuke 5y agoAt this stage of the space industry evolution, with the sufficient but still limited technology readiness of propulsion (for deep space exploration) and the much lower technology readiness of resistance in extreme environments (for onsite exploration and colonization), it seems to my modest rationale that such five startups are just aiming at minor or lateral goals? Especially considering that YC can really put anyone / anything interesting enough in direct contact with the most important and active people in the field? And the bottleneck, for both branches (propulsion, colonization) is current materials science & engineering, so that 20 years ago the world needed developers for the dotcom revolution, while today it needs materials? Just food for thought, obviously, so take my ramble for what it is.
- ianvorbach 5y agoAh, thanks for elaborating! Fair and interesting point. It's true that the work these companies are doing is not pushing the cutting edge of technology readiness, but is instead exploiting the most recent advances in R&D by finding business cases that now are possible. As new materials and science advance in research institutions, startups will then step in to commercialize that tech. So I guess I'm saying we shouldn't necessarily expect YC startups to be at the frontier of R&D
- simonh 5y agoDevelopers, developers, developers was about the things those developers would create. The equivalent here would be engineers, engineers, engineers. You need to use materials to make something, and that thing needs to fulfil a purpose. But until you have an objective and try to make the thing and work out what the thing is, you don’t even know what your requirements are. That’s why engineering projects like Apollo and the shuttle drove materials science advances. If you put the materials first you run the risk of creating a carbon fibre composites company to make giant space rocket hulls, just as the people actually making the rockets decided for their project they’d use steel.
- johnsillings 5y agoOne more – plugging https://albedo.space/ https://albedo.space/ (W21) :)
- NicoJuicy 5y agoCan you share details on the API / some example city datasets for quality? I have an idea for a 'innovation day' project and that can lead to integration in our product.
- chrisMyzel 5y agoAfter having go through sales calls with planet.com this looks very refreshing to me !!
- GDC7 5y agoIt seems to me space is a social science type bet. Much like each and every climate change related tech. There is no guarantee that the public will be interested in space or climate change 10 or 20 years from now, and space missions which are not telecommunications satellites entirely depend on the goodwill of taxpayers to keep providing the financing. The alternative model to taxpayers money has been private investors believing that space would somehow change and start yielding some more standard ROI after decades of atypical ROI (mostly morale boost for the nation every time a rocket went up). But that's just the financial capital part, the revenue of the aforementioned companies still comes from Government contracts.
- ianvorbach 5y agoI agree that this was historically the case, but the newest generation of space companies are making a solid case that the financial ROI is a reality and not just a theoretical promise. As the industry matures, government customers are becoming less critical to the success of many of these companies (although gov't will always play a strong role).
- nradov 5y agoThere is also a commercial market for satellite imagery and weather monitoring.
- godelski 5y agoPeople talking about space is really weird to listen to. It's like people don't realize where all the information for their pocket computer comes from. Do people really not realize how essential the satellite infrastructure is to our modern economy? Hell, GPS alone is worth $1.4T[0]. Weather, imaging, internet, communication all heavily rely on space access as well and I wouldn't be surprised if each one of those were equally as valuable. Do people really just think space is sending people to the moon and/or mars and not realize what we do right above our heads? [0] https://www.nist.gov/news-events/news/2019/10/economic-benefits-global-positioning-system-us-private-sector-study https://www.nist.gov/news-events/news/2019/10/economic-benef...
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- alchemistmax 5y agoAwesome article, Ian, and thank you for the shout out to Epsilon3! We're honored and excited to be supporting all these amazing space companies in YC and beyond and helping to enable the future of exploration.
- ianvorbach 5y agoThank you Max, excited to see what you and the Epsilon3 team accomplish next!
- chriselles 5y agoMomentus YC S18 as well. https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/momentus https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/momentus They went public via SPAC listed as MNTS A classmate of mine was the founder, but he ran into issues being a Russian citizen dealing with restricted space tech. So he left/divested and started a new space tech company in Switzerland. Mikhael is a really sharp guy.
- jbverschoor 5y agoYeah I was super impressed by him. Unfortunately I never got to participate, because I was too busy to follow up. Painful to see :-)
- exolymph 5y agoNot on this list (or maybe it is, I didn't check) but related and cool: > Varda Space Industries is building the world's first commercial zero-gravity industrial park at scale. https://varda.com/ https://varda.com/
- hulahoof 5y agoVery interested to hear from any AU space companies that are hiring ;)
- sydthrowaway 5y agofleet.space?
- ianvorbach 5y agoGilmour Space comes to mind: https://www.gspacetech.com/ https://www.gspacetech.com/
- sydthrowaway 5y agoAs long as the space industry is hampered by ITAR, it will go nowhere (unless you're OK with chumming up with the U.S Military Industrial Complex)
- lutorm 5y agoThe only problem is that it limits the talent pool and to whom you can offer your services. You don't have to interact with the military-industrial complex, only the US State Department.
- njarboe 5y agoSpaceX has sure gone somewhere and is still moving at a very fast pace. They have very few U.S. Military contracts and had to sue to be able to compete for those.
- chinathrow 5y agoFor all space lovers out there, I highly recommend the weekly newsletter "The Orbital Index". You'll get dense news with occasional deep dives on recent topics. https://orbitalindex.com/ https://orbitalindex.com/ Example: https://orbitalindex.com/archive/2021-11-03-Issue-141/ https://orbitalindex.com/archive/2021-11-03-Issue-141/ No affiliation, just a fan.