The SpaceX OG

1B euros. For SAR. 🤯

I organized an intervention to stop Elon from starting SpaceX. Here is the story... Twenty five years ago, Elon and I sat in a car on a dark stretch of Long Island highway, two neurodiverse geeks staring at the night sky and wondering what came next. We had both experienced substantial exits and felt the weight of possibility ahead of us. When I joked about 'space' while gazing upward, neither of us imagined we were planting the seed for what would become the largest IPO in history. We spent the next two hours debating why space was so hard. In the end, rockets are fuel and metal. We also debated where to go, and it was crystal clear that Mars was the only real destination. Upon returning to NYC, we embarked on a global tour of space, meeting space agencies and luminaries worldwide. This opened our eyes to an industry stuck in bureaucratic thinking. If things continued at that pace, it was clear that we would never explore space in our lifetime. So, we launched Life to Mars to show the world that two ambitious young men (29 and 30 years old), could send life to Mars without any government backing or support. We planned to send and grow plants on Mars, though some were pushing us to send mice. We had a $50 MM budget that rested on our purchase of two Russian ICBMs for $7 MM each. We assumed one ICBM would fail, and we would learn and fix everything before launching again. When Elon went back to actually buy the ICBMs, the Russians tripled the price, bringing out launch costs from a total of $14 MM to $42 MM. Our ambitious Life to Mars plan was no longer viable. As you might imagine, Elon was not pleased. So, he decided to start SpaceX and create his own Mars rockets. Now, this is a crazy idea, both now and at the time, so I organized a large panel of top space experts, and we ambushed him at the Georgian Hotel one morning. It was set up like an intervention for an alcoholic, but for space. Elon looked me in the eye when leaving the room and said, "I am going to do this." The intervention failed. Elon was committed. The rest is history. I am excited to see this IPO after 25 years of hard work. What SpaceX has done is a testament to human will and overcoming insurmountable obstacles. It's nothing short of amazing. Congratulations, E. Amazing.

“The extreme concentration of power effectively prevents the board from ⁠exercising ​meaningful oversight and makes it ​impossible to remove Musk against his will” Hey Danish pension fund, giving this type of control to @elonmusk is not a bug, it’s a feature!

Space is hard 🥹

Wow 🤯

I am convinced Argentina is living in a simulation 😂

The next wave of the space economy won’t be built the way the last one was. Strong perspective from @AmirBlachman on what’s missing and what comes next. spacenews.com/spaces-missing…

Your reminder to read the best piece any tech publication put out this week. corememory.com/p/the-magical…

Moon mass driver blog post is up: caseyhandmer.wordpress.com/2…

RIP Conrad. Thank you for everything you did for me. You will be missed.

I repeat: The U.S. sent thousands of its 19 years old soldiers to die in Normandy, to free Europe and to end the biggest crime against humanity ever commited - by Europeans. It was just 81 years ago. The whole reason, France, Benelux etc. 🇫🇷 exist today is because of this heroism. My grandparents could grow up in a liberal democracy. Without the U.S. they would be raised at the H*tler Youth. We Europeans would still be in wars again and again, like 1914, 1866, 1870, 1795 etc. They brought peace, democracy, liberty and human rights. They invested billions of U.S. Dollars into Europe with the Marshall Fund. They gave us more than we ever had in our history before. They protected us for 7 decades with hundreds of thousands of soldiers against the cruelties of the Soviet Union. The terror we can see nowadays in Donetsk, would have happened in Bavaria, Bourgogne or the Netherlands in 1950 if there wasn’t the U.S. 🇺🇸 Who do we Europeans think we are to let that nation down, act like bad allies, calling their President names every day on television - and have full confidence we stand better alone. All of instagram is just about, why we’re better than the U.S. We owe them so much. We Europeans are most arrogant species on earth. And to cure this we have to face the truth.

Walking alone through a foreign city at night and realizing how far you’ve come has to be a top 3 peak moment of all time

So it begins

"Risk taking is the highest virtue, the only signal that you cannot fake. - Nicolas Nassim Taleb

Starting a company, taking it public, or selling for billions… none of that really matters in the end. What actually stays with you is the relationships you built, the people you fought alongside, and the journey you shared. The rest is just noise.

I'm going to make some obvious points. (1) Blowing up all the oil infrastructure in the Middle East is an insane idea, and may well result in a global economic crash and humanitarian crisis unrivaled in the lives of those now living. We're talking about the price of everything everywhere rising, from food to gas, at a moment when inflation was already high. All of that will be laid at the feet of the authors of this war. (2) The antebellum status quo of Feb 27, 2026 was just not that bad, but we're unlikely to return to it. Expect indefinite, long-term, ongoing disruptions to everything out of the Middle East. (3) Also assume tech financing crashes for the indefinite future. The genius plan to get the Gulf states caught in the crossfire has incinerated much of the funding for LPs, for datacenters, and for IPOs. Anyone in tech who supported this war may soon learn the meaning of "force majeure" as funding gets yanked. (4) Many capital allocators will instead be allocating much further down Maslow's hierarchy of needs, towards useful basic things like food and energy. (5) It's fortunate that all those progressives yelled about the "climate crisis." Yes, their reasoning about timelines was wrong, and much of the money was wasted in graft, but the result was right: we all need energy independence from the Middle East, pronto. It's also fortunate that Elon and China autistically took climate seriously. Now they're going to need to ship a billion solar panels, electric vehicles, batteries, nuclear power plants, and the like to get everyone off oil, immediately. (6) It's not just an oil and gas problem, of course. It's also a fertilizer problem, and a chemical precursor problem. Maybe some new sources will come online at the new prices, but it takes time to dial stuff up, particularly at this scale, so shortages are almost a certainty. That said, China has actually scaled up coal-to-chemicals[a,c] (C2C), and there's also something more sci-fi called Power-to-X[b] which turns arbitrary power water air into hydrocarbons. But all of that will need to get accelerated. I have a background in chemical engineering so may start funding things in this area. (7) Ultimately, this war is going to result in tremendous blame for anyone associated with it. It's a no-win scenario to blow up this much infrastructure for so many people. Simply not worth it for whatever objective they thought they were going to attain. But unless you're actually in a position to stop the madness, the pragmatic thing to do is: scramble to mitigate the fallout to yourself, your business, and your people. [a]: reuters.com/business/energy/… [b]: alfalaval.com/industries/ene… [c]: reuters.com/sustainability/c…

"The thing is, I never left" (@travisk) is sooo much powerful than “I am back”

Probably nothing…

Uber's insane fundraising story: four rooms, 12 hours a day, and they still ran out of slots Travis Kalanick reveals how Uber's fundraising war room actually worked "We would give them a table ... this valuation, how much money you want to put in. Then we would aggregate the demand like an IPO book ... but done way better because I was in charge of pricing" "I'm in the $250 million and over club. That's one room. The fourth room is like $25 million checks ... there's a guy who works for a guy who works for a guy who works for me doing that room" "We would give them a table ... this valuation, how much money you want to put in. Then we would aggregate the demand like an IPO book ... but done way better because I was in charge of pricing"