Space Entrepreneurs Put Pitching Skills on Display at Startup Space
Since taking on the duty of SATELLITE show chairman, I’ve been working on a very important and personal goal of integrating more activities promoting young professional development, diversity, and industry entrepreneurship into the conference program. It started in 2015 with the launch of a special program to help young professionals and college students simply attend the show and continued in 2016 with establishing partnerships with SGAC and Future Space Leaders Foundation to change the pace of SATELLITE with innovative programs like their fantastic SGx keynote series. In 2017, we launched Startup Space – a new pitch style contest exclusively for aerospace entrepreneurs. Like SGx and our Young Professionals Program, Startup Space has been an enormous success and I’m proud to say that we’re bringing it back in 2018: bigger and better than ever!
The Startup Space competition will take place throughout the day on Tuesday, March 13 at the SATELLITE 2018 UnVeiled Theater, located at the center of the exhibit hall floor. Sixteen contestants will be invited to compete and placed in four competing groups. During the competition, contestants in each group will give a 5-minute pitch to a panel of judges, which will then be given a chance to ask follow-up questions for 5-10 minutes. Judges will then evaluate the pitch using a standardized scoring system. The winner receives a prize package that includes guaranteed private meetings with investors, promotional campaigns, interviews and free access to both the NewSpace and SATELLITE trade shows.
To get a visual preview of how Startup Space works, please watch this video highlight reel from last year’s Startup Space event, featuring contest winner David Shaw of Astrapi Corp:
Once again, we’re partnering with our good friends at the Space Frontier Foundation and Ball Aerospace to produce the event. This year, we’ve also added partnerships with the Harvard Business School Aerospace Alumni Group, Ideanco and Xfund. Our 2018 judges panel includes some of the most active private investors and innovators in our community, including:
Justin Cadman, Senior Vice President, Investment Banking, Raymond James
Logan Campbell, CEO, Aerotas
Barbara Clarke, Founding Member, The Impact Seat, and Founding Member, Angel Investor, Astia
Michael Collett, Managing Partner, Promus Ventures
Maher Ezzeddine, CEO, Ideanco and President, Harvard Business School Aerospace Alumni Group
David Fischer, Senior Manager of Strategic Development, Ball Aerospace
Rafferty Jackson, Strategy & Development, Principal at Jack Industries & an Astia Angel, Jack Industries
Justus Kilian, Principal, Space Angels Network
Grégory Pradels, Small Satellites Development, Aerospace Valley
Jeanette Quinlan, Managing Director, USA, Starburst Accelerator
Maryanna Saenko, Senior Associate, Venture Capital, Draper Fisher Jurvetson
Joel Viñas, Executive Director, The Center for Space Commerce and Finance (CSCF)
Contestants have been selected and invited and we will be posting our final list of competitors on the SATELLITE website soon! Please join us on the SATELLITE 2018 show floor on Tuesday, March 13 at 11a.m. when we kick off our 2nd Startup Space competition and celebrate a new group of entrepreneurs contributing innovative, new ideas and solutions to our industry!
Sincerely,
Jeffrey Hill
Chairman, SATELLITE 2018
