{"id":18743,"date":"2017-11-09T23:45:53","date_gmt":"2017-11-09T15:45:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/spacex-backer-steve-jurvetson-shares-financing-lessons-from-the-final-frontier\/"},"modified":"2017-11-09T23:45:53","modified_gmt":"2017-11-09T15:45:53","slug":"spacex-backer-steve-jurvetson-shares-financing-lessons-from-the-final-frontier","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/spacex-backer-steve-jurvetson-shares-financing-lessons-from-the-final-frontier\/","title":{"rendered":"SpaceX backer Steve Jurvetson shares financing lessons from the final frontier"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure id=\"attachment_375994\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-375994\" style=\"width: 630px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full-width wp-image-375994\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/11\/171109-jurvetson-630x405.jpg\" alt=\"Steve Jurvetson\" width=\"630\" height=\"405\" srcset=\"https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/11\/171109-jurvetson-630x405.jpg 630w, https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/11\/171109-jurvetson-768x493.jpg 768w, https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/11\/171109-jurvetson-1260x809.jpg 1260w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 630px) 100vw, 630px\"><figcaption data-nosnippet=\"\" id=\"caption-attachment-375994\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Venture capitalist Steve Jurvetson talks about investing in SpaceX during \u201cA New Space Age,\u201d a conference presented by The Economist at Seattle\u2019s Museum of Flight. (GeekWire Photo \/ Alan Boyle)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>Few space geeks are geekier than Silicon Valley venture capitalist Steve Jurvetson: His office at Draper Fisher Jurvetson in Menlo Park, Calif., is festooned with far-out artifacts including salvaged parts from Apollo spacecraft and a pizza-sized slice of moon rock.<\/p>\n<p>But for Jurvetson, space isn\u2019t just a hobby&nbsp;\u2013 it\u2019s a big part of his livelihood. He\u2019s on the board of SpaceX, and helped throw a lifeline to billionaire founder Elon Musk when he was on the verge of bankruptcy in 2008.<\/p>\n<p>Today, privately held SpaceX is thought to be worth more than $21 billion, and as managing director of DFJ, Jurvetson can take some of the credit for Musk\u2019s success.<\/p>\n<p>During a fireside chat at today\u2019s \u201cNew Space Age\u201d conference, presented by The Economist at Seattle\u2019s Museum of Flight, the 50-year-old investor shared lessons learned from his involvement with SpaceX, Planet and other ventures. Here are some of the sound bites, edited for length and clarity:<\/p>\n<h4>How SpaceX got its start<\/h4>\n<p>\u201cSpaceX was formed with a singular mission: to put a greenhouse on Mars. That was it: $100 million of funding, greenhouse on Mars, send back photos, maybe video of plants growing. And then our job is done, because we will have inspired the entire world.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe space agencies would be sort of guilted \u2013 if this not-particularly-richest person on Earth at the time could put a greenhouse on Mars, why the hell don\u2019t we have a Mars program?<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThat was it. It was like, \u2018SpaceX\u2019s job is done.\u2019 It wasn\u2019t even clear it was going to be a company. It may have been a nonprofit. It was up in the air in the early days. Thank God the Russians yanked Elon around on rockets, so he decided to build his own.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" style=\"border: none; overflow: hidden;\" src=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/plugins\/video.php?href=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.facebook.com%2FEconomistEvents%2Fvideos%2F1727104520656543%2F&amp;show_text=0&amp;width=560\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<h4>How the space industry is like the tech industry<\/h4>\n<p>\u201cYou could draw a high-level similarity between the broadband infrastructure build-out that occurred in the early days of the internet, and SpaceX and related small-satellite launchers.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s access. In both cases, literally, it\u2019s broadband access and space access. And what follows is an entrepreneurial boom that builds on top of that.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAnd similarly, if you think about how the internet has developed today, you have infrastructure layers, you have cloud services, and now you have all kinds of app developers who rely on a cloud platform and the infrastructure. So the analogy here would be access, then all kinds of other resources in space that you build upon, and now entrepreneurs can sell this entirely on the data and analytics layer.\u201d<\/p>\n<h4>How space achievements inspire techies<\/h4>\n<p>\u201cEvery entrepreneur who comes through our door, every software entrepreneur who has nothing to do with the space industry, is inspired and captivated by this era of history \u2013 the space race leading up to the lunar landings. It reminds us of so many things: the feats of engineering, the accomplishments of the human spirit when we put our minds to a particular task. \u2026<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThere were just rafts of students who went into engineering during the space race. From just after Sputnik through, frankly, the shuttle, you had this spike of people taking Ph.D.s in engineering of all sorts. Then the shuttle era withered away, but we\u2019re seeing it now again with SpaceX.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><iframe title=\"Inside DFJ\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/dj7FQsZj_Aw?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen=\"\" data-ratio=\"0.5625\" data-width=\"800\" data-height=\"450\" style=\"display: block; margin: 0px; width: 800px; height: 450px;\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<h4>Opportunities in the space industry<\/h4>\n<p>\u201cI would say that imaging, Earth observation, remote sensing are the biggest opportunities over the next five years. I think over the next 20 years, it\u2019s telecoms. Or data comms. \u2018Telecom\u2019 is an anachronism, just like \u2019email\u2019 as a standalone service is an anachronism. No one pays for email, right? The internet comes, and email is an application that comes along with the internet. Voice, video, everything will run over IP in the future. If you think out 500 years, there\u2019s no way you\u2019re going to have a dedicated telecom service.\u201d<\/p>\n<h4>The state of venture capital<\/h4>\n<p>\u201cI always love to ask the question of any entrepreneur, \u2018Why now? Why could this business not have been started 10 years ago?\u2019 If the answer is, \u2018Oh, it could have been done 10 years ago,\u2019 we won\u2019t invest\u2026.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI wish the \u2018venture\u2019 would come back into venture capital, as opposed to just capital. The entire notion of investing in a garage startup was to bet on a couple of people with a big idea that hadn\u2019t been done before \u2013 and ideally, had never been tried before. And that\u2019s what I try to do. I value investing in things that are unlike anything I\u2019ve seen before. That simple rule actually guides everything I\u2019ve invested in.\u2026<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYou compare becoming a multiplanetary species to slightly better ad targeting: Which really inspires the next generation? Which will you be proud about when you come home and talk to your kids?\u201d<\/p>\n<p><em>GeekWire was one of the media sponsors of The Economist\u2019s&nbsp;\u201cNew Space Age\u201d&nbsp;conference. For videos from the conference, check out the&nbsp;Facebook page for The Economist Events.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Venture capitalist Steve Jurvetson talks about investing in SpaceX during \u201cA New Space Age,\u201d a conference presented by The Economist at Seattle\u2019s Museum of Flight. (GeekWire Photo \/ Alan Boyle) Few space geeks are geekier than Silicon Valley venture capitalist Steve Jurvetson: His office at Draper Fisher Jurvetson in Menlo Park, Calif., is festooned with [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[316,4960,273],"class_list":["post-18743","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-spacex","tag-steve-jurvetson","tag-venture-capital"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18743"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18743"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18743\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18743"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18743"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18743"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}