Space Companies at Y Combinator

https://spacedotbiz.substack.com/p/y-combinator

by ianvorbach • 5 years ago

157 81 5 years ago

spacedotbiz.substack.com

csteubs2• 5 years ago

Always 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.

ianvorbach12• 5 years ago

Good 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.

csteubs2• 5 years ago

Space-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.

jacobchoi• 5 years ago

great article!

blamazon• 5 years ago

Wishing the best to these teams!

nawgz• 5 years ago

So 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• 5 years ago

If people are going to astroturf, I'd rather it was for cool space tech rather than SEO tips.

dang• 5 years ago

I've killed those comments now.

d_silin2• 5 years ago

Shameless plug of our space company (we applied 4 times to YC, btw): https://www.exodusorbitals.com

ianvorbach12• 5 years ago

Thanks for sharing!

unixhero• 5 years ago

Very cool, what about publishing a pricing page? Or is it free?

chrisMyzel3• 5 years ago

Well…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• 5 years ago

Hey 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• 5 years ago

This 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• 5 years ago

I 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• 5 years ago

there are plenty of niche accelerators. the startburst acceleartor focuses exclusively on space and aerospace startups.

ianvorbach12• 5 years ago

True! A couple other popular space accelerators that come to mind are the Seraphim/AWS Space Accelerator and Creative Destruction Lab.

yaseer• 5 years ago

We 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.

llcrabtree3• 5 years ago

+1 as the YC community is amazing!

bagels• 5 years ago

Amazing opportunities created by SpaceX smashing launch costs and driving up launch frequency.

ianvorbach12• 5 years ago

Plus in educating a new generation of engineers in how to build great space technology in a scrappy way. Really started with SpaceX

Robotbeat• 5 years ago

Worth pointing out that SpaceX in turn learned a lot of that from Armadillo Aerospace and Masten Space Systems.

llcrabtree3• 5 years ago

Hands up for scrappy, quick iterative engineering at SpaceX. It's truly unparalleled.

pwnOrbitals3• 5 years ago

I'd like to interject this shameless for our space propulsion company : https://gamaspace.com/. Solar sails for cheap interplanetary travel !

ianvorbach12• 5 years ago

Appreciate you sharing!

llcrabtree3• 5 years ago

Very cool! Would love to learn more about what you're working on!!

pwnOrbitals3• 5 years ago

We'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 :)

chrisMyzel3• 5 years ago

I’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

pwnOrbitals3• 5 years ago

Thank you for the feedback. We have a lot to show, so I'll see what we can include ;)

DrNuke2• 5 years 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).

ianvorbach12• 5 years ago

Having trouble following. Interested in hearing more if you'd be willing to expand!

DrNuke2• 5 years ago

At 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.

d_silin2• 5 years ago

Yes and no. Material science is a limitation for propulsion mostly, but you can let big guys handle that (NASA, SpaceX, etc). There are plenty of niches that require massive amount of hardware and software engineering, but all the tech is already there - space robotics for example.

There is also a question of costs: for deep space missions, beyond LEO you need real rad-hardened electronics. Rad-hardened electronics exists. Cheap rad-hardened electronics doesn't. And there is pleny of other examples. Ion engines is mature enough technology. Cheap ion engines on the other side...

johnsillings• 5 years ago

One more – plugging https://albedo.space/ (W21) :)

NicoJuicy• 5 years ago

Can 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.

chrisMyzel3• 5 years ago

After having go through sales calls with planet.com this looks very refreshing to me !!

GDC76• 5 years ago

It 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.

ianvorbach12• 5 years ago

I 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• 5 years ago

There is also a commercial market for satellite imagery and weather monitoring.

godelski6• 5 years ago

People 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-benef...

GDC76• 5 years ago

Hell, GPS alone is worth $1.4T

The fact that it's worth that much doesn't mean that the companies sending those up there would make a fortune.

I can give you the example of concrete. Don't people realize how vital concrete is for the modern economy? It's worth 100T, matter of fact it's unvaluable, putting a figure on it would be lowballing it.

Do you want to start a concrete company though? Do you want to invest in it?

NO! You want to start/invest the Microsoft, Google and Facebook of the world.

notahacker2• 5 years ago

It's a common enough view amongst industry insiders, and not exclusive to manned spaceflight. That GPS? It's fantastically useful, but its also designed and operated by the US government for defence purposes. The other GNSS PNT providers are also strategic state projects. Imaging? There are commercial markets for it (as a colleague put it, it's been "just around the corner" of realising its commercial potential since the 1970s!) but if you're putting up imaging satellite constellations you're expecting that directly as funders or indirectly as the largest customers, governments will pay for it (turtles all the way down as their commercial customers are often taking funding from ESA for research projects they hope to scale up in future, probably by selling to governments). And even much of the pure commercial Earth Observation is underwritten by "social science"-type legal obligations to monitor environmental footprints etc not by pure profit expectations. Satphones might be used by private companies paying private companies, but the only major player to start out as a VC funded entity rather than a state project crashed and burned financially before the US govt stepped in; some of the LEO connectivity providers have also headed in that direction. And satellite television is as pure a commercial play as it gets, until you start looking at who funded the first satellites for television broadcast, and try to imagine why private TV channels would have bothered investing in off-world delivery innovation without all that social investment in finding use cases for their launch vehicles and satellite tech.

As for the manned space programmes, they stop looking wasteful and start looking surprisingly beneficial when you consider externalities (from cochlear implants to memory foam), but that's the ultimate example of it being a social benefit of throwing enormous amounts of money at very smart people solving new problems, not a VC-friendly commercial proposition.

njarboe2• 5 years ago

If cost per pound to orbit drops by 100-1000 times with the advent of SpaceX's Starship rocket, who knows what kinds of space activities will be profitable.

If it only costs $1 million to immigrate to Mars, you might be surprised how many people would give it a try and how many billionaires would sponsor whole colonies. Like when Europeans colonized North America.

XorNot• 5 years ago

The cost to orbit drops being talked about are going to put space tourism solidly within reach of the middle class.

At that point the market becomes basically infinite: it'll be a standard rite of passage to see Earth from space, much like how people go to Disneyland.

alchemistmax• 5 years ago

Awesome 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.

ianvorbach12• 5 years ago

Thank you Max, excited to see what you and the Epsilon3 team accomplish next!

chriselles• 5 years ago

Momentus YC S18 as well.

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• 5 years ago

Yeah I was super impressed by him. Unfortunately I never got to participate, because I was too busy to follow up.

Painful to see :-)

exolymph• 5 years ago

Not 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/

hulahoof• 5 years ago

Very interested to hear from any AU space companies that are hiring ;)

sydthrowaway2• 5 years ago

fleet.space?

ianvorbach12• 5 years ago

Gilmour Space comes to mind: https://www.gspacetech.com/

sydthrowaway2• 5 years ago

As 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)

njarboe2• 5 years ago

SpaceX 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.

lutorm• 5 years ago

The 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.

chinathrow• 5 years ago

For 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/

Example: https://orbitalindex.com/archive/2021-11-03-Issue-141/

No affiliation, just a fan.

Space Companies at Y Combinator

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