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SpaceX alums are branching out and shaping the startup economy
- preommr 4y agoMakes sense, not a lot of space companies to begin with, much less with people that have a startup mentality. Feel like the culture at Boeing or NASA is going to be very different from the one needed for a pioneering startup. And even then it's only a handful of investements, with how much liquidity is/was in the market not surprising that people got a few million for moonshots given how the potential for a whole new industry.
- schrectacular 4y agoPun intended I hope!
- themanmaran 4y agoConversely- I put together a list of all the Space industry startups that YC funded over the last few years[1], thinking it would be entirely "ex-SpaceX" founders. But it turned out to have a pretty distributed mix: [1] https://havewelanded.com/yc-space-sector-investments#:~:text=Who%20are%20the%20founders https://havewelanded.com/yc-space-sector-investments#:~:text...
- spaceguillotine 4y ago[flagged]
- jsemrau 4y agoFrom the opening paragraph "Earlier this week, Elon Musk — Grimes’s ex-boyfriend, the pancake-haired chief executive of Tesla and SpaceX and also the man who joked about starting a “TITS” University on Twitter — was named Time’s Person of the Year for 2021." I think it's safe to assume a certain bias.
- onethought 4y agoTokyo Institute of Technology is already a thing.
- ben_w 4y agoGiven the language difference, that's a bit like someone in Tokyo saying they meant https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ian_Mune https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ian_Mune instead of 胸 (Although I may be showing a certain degree of misunderstanding of my own given how different languages slice up reality in different ways, and 胸 may not mean quite what a literal translation suggests…)
- abledon 4y agoahh yes, the cut, the 'great' publication that brought you insightful pieces like this eye roll https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fFxQkg_Ye60 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fFxQkg_Ye60
- foreverobama 4y ago[dead]
- echelon 4y agoI wish it was more like this at existing companies. Why everyone isn't leaving Adobe, Meta, and Google to found their own AI / generative media startups astounds me. If you work in our incredibly lucrative field, you may be able to afford a few quarters of leaning into risk. Startups are like a brush fire. Old incumbents have so much legacy code and cruft that nimble upstarts killing them is healthy. The "SpaceX diaspora" should be the norm everywhere opportunity arises.
- elbigbad 4y agoMy company immediately sues anyone who leave to join a competitor, and even more viciously attacks I would assume if someone were to actually start a competing business.
- tru3_power 4y agoOn what grounds do they sue them?
- letier 4y agoI’d guess the contracts have a no compete clause.
- adgjlsfhk1 4y agoCorporate lawsuits against individuals generally don't need grounds. The pain is the point.
- bavila 4y agoWhat's groundless is this mentality. Please read Rule 11 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure (a rule that is also well-adopted in state courts as well). As fun as it is to hate on big tech, one should still be mindful of the fact that their attorneys aren't stupid enough to file patently frivolous lawsuits that put their own law licenses on the line.
- cyanydeez 4y ago[flagged]
- ramraj07 4y agoSpaceX is private and Elon isn’t exactly known for paying a ton so no?
- arcticbull 4y agoI assume they've been given the chance to participate in secondary sales by now. 'Alum' in this case probably does mean 'new money' haha.
- Robotbeat 4y agoActually yes. SpaceX doesn’t pay a ton in salary, but their equity options have been incredibly valuable, so overall compensation has been good. If they’ve been around for a while and have had time for their shares to vest, they’re probably millionaires. SpaceX is worth a ton of money, and even tho SpaceX is private, they do regular private sales so employees can sell their shares. The early employees in particular have made a LOT of money. Gwynne Shotwell, the President of SpaceX, for instance, is one of the earliest employees and is worth over $600 million now, which is greater than the net worth of Elon when he started SpaceX (including adjusting for inflation). (And she deserves it, too. Absolute rockstar.) SpaceX really does show that hard work in a startup can pay off handsomely.
- ramraj07 4y agoThat sounds great indeed. Didn’t think of private sales that let you cash out your entire portfolio (or even a large fraction of it) were practiced. Anyone here have an idea of current spacex valuation?
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- gonesilent 4y ago
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- _just7_ 4y agoWhat is up with that site giving me three seperate popups warning me that the site uses cookies
- nier 4y agoDisabling content blockers, I can see what you’re describing. Seems like satire.
- iscrewyou 4y agoway of tangent from this thread but which content blockers do you use?
- jdeibele 4y agoNot the poster but the Hush extension for Safari seems to work well on this site because I didn't see any notices. And that's what it's supposed to accomplish. https://apps.apple.com/us/app/hush-nag-blocker/id1544743900 https://apps.apple.com/us/app/hush-nag-blocker/id1544743900 I'm sure there are similar things for FireFox or Chromium browsers but Hush seems Safari-only.
- nier 4y agoI was surprised to find only AdGuard on my main iPhone. I do also use Hush on my other one. AdGuard has most all filters enabled except the language-specific ones and the «Other» category.
- throwaway1777 4y agoThanks GDPR!
- jiggawatts 4y agoThanks marketing people that decided to double down despite the clear distaste of the general public at their relentless tracking.
- exogeny 4y agoThis reads like a press release to me.
- realworldperson 4y ago[dead]
- onetokeoverthe 4y ago[dead]
- throwawaymaths 4y agoAnecdotal, but: Startup I worked at hired a bunch of SpaceX and other musk company employees as middle management, during the hyper growth phase and every single one of them was simply awful. Some were just abusive managers, many were just not that effective. The worst one was a manager that would swoop down with heroics, take credit for other people's work, not support reports on ideas you had, played the blame game, etc.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- yawnr 4y agoVCs and other startups love to shower these people with money like they’re the second coming only to find out that their success was purely circumstantial and mostly a confluence of a ton of factors that had nothing to do with them like luck and timing.
- robocat 4y agoThe VC model is invest in a bunch of companies, with the idea that one goes to the moon and the rest fail. One success pays for a lot of failures. So if you personally see a lot of failures, that doesn’t mean the VC model is failing. Although most VC funds lose money (there’s a power law for their returns too!) Paul Graham wrote a scathing summary of VCs, and one reason for YC is to be more honest and fair (YC still aims for capitalist gains, they just play the game differently). http://paulgraham.com/venturecapital.html http://paulgraham.com/venturecapital.html He also wrote that it is near impossible to pick investment winners (which is what VCs are “supposed” to do).
- majkinetor 4y agoStrange generallization. In any environment there are always those that don't belong. There must be some double digit percentage of them who are genuinelly sculpted in specific way in that harsh working environment. Or you are saying that stressor doesn't make you better in any way (if you survive it). Probability looks higher that you will find such people at ex-Space X group then other more relaxed and/or bureaucratically leaden companies, IMO. They shower them with money because, as always, they don't know who is genuine and who is not, only results will tell but looks like a solid bet anyway, more then showering with money random engineer of ex anything.
- raj33krish 4y agothat's good for overall industry.
- pfoof 4y agoA bit offtopic but this website has literally three fullscreen (mobile) consent boxes.
- endorphine 4y agoI see none (probably uBlock Origin on Firefox doing it's thing)
- anonyme-honteux 4y agoGreat, love it when shitty work culture super, who doesn't like to have a boss that thinks he is a medieval landlord?
- vrglvrglvrgl 4y ago[dead]
- lifeisstillgood 4y ago- it's frankly impossible to pick investment winners - so a more sensible approach might be to provide smaller investments to more people. Governments basically do this by providing schooling and health care to children till age of 18 or so. I mean the RoI on teaching Elon to read was fairly high. I wonder if his primary school teacher could get a lien on future earnings? - if MMT is right, then the problem is not limited capital but limited investment opportunities- but if we invest in everyone - what does that mean or look like?
- jagged-chisel 4y ago> I wonder if his primary school teacher could get a lien on future earnings? It’s not the primary school teacher that made the investment. It’s whomever was bankrolling salaries and expenses for teachers, cafeteria workers, buildings to house the activity … The “lien” on future income would likely be “taxes” (assuming public school here.)
- lordnacho 4y agoThis poses a bit if an interesting quandary for society. Which society paid for Musk to be educated? He grew up in South Africa. How much tax does he pay there relative to where he built his stuff? Where should he pay his taxes? What about other people who grow up elsewhere and move? Is it ok to hire a load of doctors from other countries?
- lifeisstillgood 4y agoThere is the glimmer of a movement here - the Yelland led move to 15% minimum corporation tax is part of the move to solve this very problem. The EU is trying to solve this. But it's reaching the point of dealing with cross border fiscal policy and that's really hard without become a real federation. And Inthink that is the ultimate global goal here. Which is ... science fiction Imagine how immigration would look different if South Africa had a lien on ex-citizens taxation - if a slice of every sales tax paid in Nevada by a Mexican citizen went back to Mexico City. I am not sure how it plays out - but it's possible that countries that benefit from immigration have to pay for it.
- EZ-Cheeze 4y agoDoes anyone have any tips on getting hired by Elon?
- tzm 4y agoIs anyone tracking former Telsa employees?
- HPsquared 4y agoThis market should be called the "space space".
- turtleyacht 4y agoI heard of consumer stuff being "spinoffs from NASA," and it's neat we may soon see "spinoffs from SpaceX."
- trollerator23 4y agoEh. Everybody knows the star behind Relativity is Tim Ellis who is an alum of ... wait for it ... Blue Origin.