Virgin Galactic

Should we put in a little bit of fake reverb in post so that it sounds like we were actually live? Like at a at an auditorium. Live from the cavernous Ascend Auditorium. Live from Spaceport America. Welcome to Season 7, Episode 6 of Acquired, the podcast about great technology companies and the stories and playbooks behind them. I'm Ben Gilbert and I'm the co-founder of Pioneer Square Labs, a startup studio and venture capital firm in Seattle.

And I'm David Rosenthal. I'm an angel investor and 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 Shemoth Polyhapatia, and the aerospace pioneers, including Bert Ratan. and Peter Diamondis 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 twenty twenty one, Sir Richard Branson himself flying on their first commercial trip. However, the news did break this morning that and this probably won't surprise longtime followers of the company, they announced that this uh flight is delayed indefinitely. And we'll put a link in the show notes to read that press release. But for you regular acquired listeners, this 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.

And a few fast facts. Virgin Galactic, if they are successful in opening up space tourism, it will have a massive impact on the percentage of our species to go to space. as pointed in their S four, the SPAC version of an IPO prospectus. Only five hundred and seventy three humans had ever been to space by August of twenty nineteen, and Virgin Galactic already has over six hundred customers, or as they call them, potential future astronauts who have prepaid deposits on their trip to space. And And the sticker price for one person to take that trip.

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