In the startup world, there are few mantras more universally accepted than “Build Something Massive.” It’s a powerful motivator. And in many sectors—especially software, fintech, and consumer platforms—it’s the right call. But space is not software.
As a founder of a space business, the most “massive” thing you can build is NOT your valuation.
It’s your reputation.
But most venture capitalists investing in space companies do not understand this. Or they know it but think they can “disrupt” the market by doing away with this fact. In this, they are mistaken.
The plain fact of the matter is that when we treat venture capital as the default path to scale, we start confusing capital raised with progress made—and we push too many companies toward business models that simply don’t fit the realities they are going to face if they want to get off this planet.
But it is also a fact that in today’s entrepreneurial culture, success is most often defined by a company’s ability to attract capital. Venture capital. Funding rounds become milestones. Pitch decks become strategic artifacts. Startups are ranked not by what they’ve delivered, but by who has backed them and with how much money.
I won’t go into the social ills of this predilection here – my personal belief is that it does a lot of harm. But in the space sector it is not just morally and ethically questionable it is also not a recipe for financial success. Because, actually, in this business, speed kills.
Failure does not just cost money—it costs missions, reputations, and years of opportunity. The venture model, built on fast iteration, and rapid scaling without consideration for the consequences to those outside the circle of the founder and their VC backers, is fundamentally mismatched to the timelines, constraints, and stakes of the space business.
Yet too many founders are being told, explicitly or implicitly, that only raising venture capital is proof that they are on the right track. And too many programs—incubators, accelerators, and even well-meaning advisors—reinforce that narrative.
I have sat in rooms where investors have openly criticized founders for focusing too much on building viable businesses. One founder I know was actively pursuing flight heritage and building customer traction—a milestone that, in the space sector, should be seen as a major indicator of progress.
But rather than commend their execution, the feedback from investors was disappointment: they felt the founder was not “investible” because they were not spending enough time raising capital to fund speculative future growth and to increase their current valuation for the benefit of their VC backers.
This kind of thinking is not just unhelpful—it’s corrosive.
I also hear, far too often, investors and others in the ecosystem speaking with open contempt about so-called “lifestyle businesses.” By which they mean companies that are focused on achieving durable success, creating real value, and sharing that value with employees and communities—not just with the Limited Partners that their VCs serve. The dismissiveness in those conversations is striking—and frankly, offensive.
I ran a company that matches the description of “lifestyle business”.
I ran it with great pride.
I wouldn’t have traded the impact we created or the culture we built for anything.
This is what I mean when I say that we’re letting one model of capital define what success looks like—and in doing so, we’re pushing founders away from business models that actually work for them.
I am increasingly convinced that the Venture Capital is becoming a “monoculture” which is incapable of real innovation. VC funds are beholden to Limited Partners that demand Internal Rates of Return that are 10 times what the regular markets would provide and view anything less than that as failure. VCs in turn prefer to place many “long bets” in the hopes that a few (very few) will pay off handsomely. As a result, their “assets under management” are convinced to pursue business strategies that are riskier than they need to be – resulting in a much higher failure rate than is necessary – or healthy for the economy as a whole.
But there is no point in trying to convince VCs of this point. VCs increasingly believe that there is only one way to be successful and it is their way. As one founder told me recently – “We keep getting term sheets – and they all say the same thing.”
I really do believe that if this sector is going to realize its potential, we need to stop encouraging space founders to conform to venture norms, instead we need to spend more time educating and attracting a broader spectrum of investors. Investors who understand strategic infrastructure plays. Investors who know how to evaluate risk in hardware-dominant sectors. Investors who recognize that reputation and execution—not velocity—are the real drivers of long-term value in space. Investors who want to take pride in what their support accomplishes – beyond creating financial returns for nameless Limited Partners.
Programs like the Creative Destruction Lab, and others in the ecosystem, are well-positioned to lead this shift. Rather than training founders to pitch like tech startups, they could play a catalytic role in training investors to think like aerospace primes—or at least like strategic capital. But they don’t. Which is unfortunate.
This is not about lowering ambition. It’s about aligning ambition with reality. The companies that succeed in space are the ones that build enduring customer relationships, execute flawlessly under constraints, and demonstrate flight heritage. These are not optional extras. They are the business. Insisting on this truth is not a sign of complacency and stagnation that needs to be “disrupted”. They are truths born of long experience and the laws of physics. They cannot be changed with a good story and a good pitch deck.
And I am not just putting on my “Grumpy Old Guy” hat on the sidelines here. Over the last 5 years I have seen hundreds of startups, and I have worked closely with more than two dozen of them. The ones I consider the greatest success stories—the ones building long-term, impactful businesses—have almost all struggled to raise capital.
Why?
Because they refused to bend to the pressure to pursue unsustainable growth at the expense of their mission. They chose instead to build disciplined organizations grounded in the fundamentals of good business—delivering value to every stakeholder, not just a few on the cap table.
Ironically, some of the least successful companies I’ve seen are the ones that raised the most money. Many of them did so without a clear grasp of business basics—and their investors didn’t encourage them to learn. They moved fast, spent freely, and learned too late that in space, capital cannot buy credibility.
AND at the end of the day, serious customers in the space business don’t care how large your last raise was. They care whether you show up on time, deliver what you promised, and get the job done right. Everything else is noise.
Truly, if we want to talk about building something massive in space, let’s talk about building enduring capability. Let’s talk about scaling trust, not just revenue. Let’s talk about building companies that customers return to—because the stakes are too high to gamble on anyone else.
That kind of “massive” doesn’t fit neatly into a standard VC pitch deck. But it’s the foundation of a resilient, globally competitive space sector. And it’s time we started treating it as such.
As I am frequently forced to say to the founders I work with – maybe it’s not your pitch – maybe it’s your audience.
It’s time to find a new audience. One that really wants to use their investment dollars to go to space – even if they don’t leave the planet to do it.
