Typical Mistake

By my opinion it’s necessary to mention about one very important mistake, typical for many space startups.

In case if you founding private space company on your own (not as a contractor of big corps or government), you definitely will face lack of customers.

This happens just because market of “direct” space services is very narrow. It’s B2B only, and not every business needs “direct” space services. (Under “direct” space services I mean launches, satellites, raw satellite data, etc. I’m not talking now about “indirect” space services, like GPS chips or processed geospatial data).

Widely spread decision in this case is to “diverse your business”. Under this diversification inexperienced CEOs offers number of sometimes very quirky ways of change. From what I saw myself, I can count:

• Processing satellite data
• Industrial sensors development
• Game development
• 3D printing
• Education
• Real estate business

Etc.

It’s nothing wrong in such businesses in generic. But such “diversification” of space company is deadly for space business.

Time Means Space

The key flaw of such decision is that when you starting to do something else, you stopping to do space.This is a big trouble, because at start your business needs all your attention for success – you can not diverse yourself and do two things at once. You simply have no time to do both jobs well. So, in the end your business turning into company you “diverted” it to.

You may object – but, Daniil, take a look to SpaceX! Musk has Tesla, X, and A, B, C, and numbers of other businesses!

And you will be wrong. First, Musk from the beginning had tons of money. Second, actually, Tesla etc. are not a result of diversification of SpaceX. These companies are investments of very rich person into different industries. Musk didn’t diverse SpaceX – he diverse his investment case.

So, SpaceX is not diverse. Engineers of SpaceX don’t need to do anything for Tesla, and Musk himself, probably, rarely need to focus on technical and production problems of SpaceX – he mostly focus on strategic decisions and orchestration of his “empire”.

This is not the only way. I saw different cases also. Alternative for “diverse of investments” are “governmental funding” and “space company as inner startup”. If with governmental funding everything is obvious (this is classic way of growth of most of space companies, from space departments of Boeing and McDonnel to modern Russian “Bureau 1440”), than “inner startup” concept requires some explanation.

This is a case when successful company investing part of its income in space technologies because of decision of an owners. This is relatively rare thing (space is not interesting for average business), but such cases exists. Russian company Geoscan can be an example of such approach. Nowadays (2026), after a success of western space companies and raising of global political frictions, more companies forms and funding space departments. As an example, I can mention South Korean Hanwha Aerospace.

Solution

A solution is, as everything in space, very grim and unwelcoming. If you feel that you need to “diverse”, than your space business already failed.

This is normal.

Stop it, sit and think. Probably, your idea was wrong. Good ideas can find funding easily and business based on them does not need to diverse.

Make a conclusions.

Than stand up and try again.

And remember – shortest path to the goal is the best one.