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One Energy is on a trajectory to become a unicorn company and part of our responsibility for being a company on that track is to study what makes unicorn companies so successful.

The second study is on SpaceX.  See below for the text as well as link for pdf of the review by Katie Treadway.

SpaceX Company Snapshot
Company History and Purpose
SpaceX is a vertically integrated space travel company that designs, manufactures, and launches advanced rockets and spacecraft. The company was founded in 2002 by CEO Elon Musk and is based in Hawthorne, California. Musk founded SpaceX to revolutionize space technology with the ultimate goal of enabling humans to live on other planets. Using vertical integration, SpaceX is constantly pushing to reduce space travel costs to beat out competitors and achieve their mission of life on Mars.

Achievements/Milestones
SpaceX has achieved the following historic milestones:

• SpaceX is the only private company ever to return a spacecraft from low-Earth orbit
• SpaceX was the first private company to deliver cargo to and from the International Space Station; it now conducts regular cargo resupply missions for NASA
• SpaceX successfully achieved the first reflight of an orbital class rocket, which is a milestone to full and rapid rocket resusability. SpaceX believes rocket and spacecraft reusability is crucial to being able to make human space travel affordable and travel to Mars feasible.

Leadership Team
Elon Musk, CEO and Lead Designer: Musk is one of the most well-known entrepreneurs in the world. In addition to being the CEO of SpaceX, he is also the CEO and product architect of Tesla Inc., Co-chairman of OpenAI, and founder and CEO of Neuralink. He was previously co-founder and chairman of SolarCity, co-founder of Zip2, and founder of X.com (which merged with Confinity and took the name PayPal). Musk is known for being a visionary, but he is often questioned on his ability to successfully run businesses to achieve his lofty goals. It is not uncommon for Musk to work 100-hour weeks and it is reported that Musk puts incredible pressure on employees to achieve stellar performance.[1]

Gwynne Shotwell, President and COO: Shotwell manages the daily operations of SpaceX, including a manifest of more than 40 upcoming launches, a $2.6 billion contract with NASA to deliver astronauts to the International Space Station, and readying a next-generation Dragon Spacecraft for its first trip to Mars in 2018. Shotwell has degrees in mechanical engineering and applied mathematics, and was the seventh employee hired at SpaceX.

Tom Mueller, CTO of Propulsion: Mueller is an American rocket engineer and rocket engine designer. He (along with Elon Musk) is a founding employee of SpaceX. He is considered one of the world’s leading spacecraft propulsion experts and holds several United States patents for propulsion technology.

Finances
SpaceX is a privately held company. Elon Musk, the Company’s CEO has resisted going public stating that one of his greatest fears is that SpaceX will “somehow get taken over by investors who just want to maximize the profit of the company and not go to Mars.” Though SpaceX’s finances aren’t publicly available, sources show that the company, though profitable, has been operating with razor-thin margins to keep costs down and beat out the competition.[2] In addition, other sources indicate that Musk’s trust currently owns 54% of the outstanding stock of SpaceX and has voting control of 78% of the outstanding stock of SpaceX.[3] It was recently reported that SpaceX recently raised another $350 million — bringing the company’s value to $21 billion and making it one of the world’s highest-valued private firms along with Uber (recently estimated to be worth nearly $70 billion) and Airbnb (worth more than $30 billion).[4]

Exponential Growth
The company has grown rapidly since it was founded in 2002. It grew from 160 employees in November 2005 to 1,100 in 2010, to 3,800 employees and contractors by October 2013, and to near 5,000 by late 2015. As of April 2017, the company has nearly 6,000 employees.

Lessons to Learn
Motivation from vision: SpaceX’s mission and its complete dedication to achieving that mission is impressive. SpaceX literally wants to go to Mars. Everything it does is to achieve this objective. I think a goal for One Energy is to publicly articulate our mission in a way that is as motivating and impressive as SpaceX’s. One Energy is revolutionizing the way we power the world.

The benefits of being privately-held: My research on SpaceX reaffirmed my support of the idea that One Energy should remain private. Being a private company enables One Energy to be more creative, think long-term, and focus on our core mission as opposed to being focused solely on short-term financial performance.

A one-man show: On the exterior, it appears as though SpaceX is a one-man show. For example, Elon Musk is the only company leader discussed on the company’s website. However, it is clear that without the brilliant engineers at SpaceX and other key employees, SpaceX would not be successful. Compared to One Energy, I think this emphasizes that even if Jereme is in news articles and is the face of One Energy, One Energy will never grow and be successful without a strong team.

The power of vertical integration: Most of the unicorn companies that are being researched are service-based technology companies, which is starkly different from One Energy and its asset-heavy business model. This is not the case for SpaceX. SpaceX attempts to design and manufacture every component of its spacecrafts to lower costs, which is similar to One Energy. It is interesting to see another vertically integrated unicorn, but the jury is still out on whether SpaceX can grow and maintain a business that can survive in the long-term based on this model. So far, it has been quite successful in doing so.

[1] http://www.businessinsider.com/what-its-like-to-work-for-elon-musk-2014-6

[2] https://www.cnbc.com/2017/05/17/elon-musk-is-rushing-to-beat-nasa-to-mars-perhaps-during-trump-presidency.html

[3] https://electrek.co/2016/11/16/elon-musk-stake-spacex-tesla-shares/

[4] http://money.cnn.com/2017/07/27/technology/business/spacex-valuation-21-billion/index.html

NATUREFRESH FARMS: SCOUTING

Last month, I attended the Northwest Ohio Ag-Business Breakfast Forum and was introduced to Peter Quiling, the founder and president of NatureFresh Farms, a greenhouse produce-farming company in Delta, OH. This opportunity was unexpected and the events leading up to my conversation with Mr. Quiling were partially thanks to happenstance. However, because we chose to follow the whale’s migration path (to the Breakfast Forum) instead of simply visiting their home base (their local facility or corporate headquarters), we have now landed an exciting prospect in the Scouting queue of the Whaleboard.

​Check out this cool video about NatureFresh Farms:

​THIS WEEK
OMA Energy Committee meeting
On Wednesday, Katie and I are attending the OMA Energy Committee meeting in Columbus, where we’ll be able to meet with manufacturers and learn about energy updates in the area.