Investing in Space Start-Ups - Best Practices

Space Forward - An Interdisciplinary Podcast

English - April 01, 2021 07:50 - 1 hour - 88.8 MB
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Previous Episode: The physics of space travel - Engineering vs Breakthrough Physics?

Next Episode: Space Commerce - The ecstasy of gold

In this episode we seek to understand the decision-making environment in which Space Business Angels operate and the mindset they follow when making investment decisions, exploring best practices, and getting an industry outlook from those with skin in the game. We talk about risk mitigation, selling shovels instead of digging gold, drivers of scale, investing horizontally vs vertically, why Luxembourg produces above the average space companies, and the role of EBAN Space.

Our guest today is Fabrice Testa, Chairman of EBAN SPACE, the space branch of Europe's leading early stage investors network, and Co-Founder of both the Luxembourg Space Tech Angels and Maana Electric. An Aerospace Engineer by training, Fabrice is a space business angel, serial entrepreneur, co-founder and Chief Financial Officer of Maana Electric which aims to be the utility company of the solar system, starting with solar panels on the Moon. He has supported start-ups in growing and scaling their ideas as a mentor, coach, and in several other key capacities.

CONTENT
00:01:59 Intro
00:07:57 Logistic growth curve and similarities to the IT industry in the late 1970s/80s/90s
00:12:18 Categorisation of the space market
00:19:39 What are the early segments of the market that need to grow
00:25:16 Drivers of scale / Total Addressable Market
00:30:16 Advices to founders
00:34:03 MBAs vs Engineers / Immediate Value to the customer
00:39:09 VCs and their investment periods
00:45:02 Skin in the game
00:47:31 CAPM / Risk assessment
00:52:39 Outliers / Risk of failure
00:56:40 The different risk variables of Business Angels and Venture Capital
01:00:48 Is it better to be a Business Angel or a VC?
01:03:16 Vertical vs horizontal space industry portfolio
01:07:50 Increasing chances to find outliers
01:11:46 Empty company containers full of money (SPAC)
01:18:28 Where is the next Rocket Valley / Satellite Valley?
01:21:45 What is Luxembourg doing right?
01:24:12 The role of EBAN Space / Next Steps
01:30:53 Humans want to explore

SHOWNOTES

Fabrice Testa https://www.linkedin.com/in/fabricetesta/
Maana Electric https://www.maanaelectric.com/
EBAN Space https://www.eban.org/eban-space/
Space Tech Angels https://www.lsta.lu/
https://www.spaceangels.com/