Ben Gilbert: prediction

Transcript context

…And I’m David Rosenthal. I am an angel investor and an independent advisor to startups based in San Francisco. And we are your hosts. Today, we are coming to you live from ASCEND: The event defining the future of space. Over the next hour, we will tell the fascinating story of Virgin Galactic, and the swirling cocktail of the billionaires, Richard Branson, Paul Allen, and Chamath Palihapitiya, and the aerospace pioneers including Burt Rutan and Peter Diamandis behind it. We also thought it would be very timely because, in the next week, Virgin Galactic expected to make their first flight from Spaceport America in New Mexico, followed by next year in early 2021, Sir Richard Branson himself flying on their first commercial trip. However, the news did break this morning—this probably won’t surprise long-time followers of the company—they announced that this flight is delayed indefinitely. I will put a link in the show notes to read that press release. For you, regular Acquired listeners, this is our very first episode covering a company that went public via a SPAC, and we will unpack the business behind and hopefully ahead of the company. A few fast facts. Virgin Galactic—if they are successful in opening up space tourism—will have a massive impact on the percentage of our species to go to space. As pointed out in their S-4 (the SPAC version of an IPO prospectus), only 573 humans had ever been to space by August of 2019, and Virgin Galactic already has over 600 customers—or as they call them potential future astronauts—who have prepaid deposits on their trip to space. The sticker price for one person to take that trip: $250,000. A cool quarter of a million dollars.…

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