High Five Energy Founders

From Bankruptcy to a $5.2 Billion Space IPO | Eric Salwan of Firefly

• Jeffrey Chernick • Season 1 • Episode 8

Share episode

Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.

0:00 | 1:02:56

Eric Salwan, co-founder and former Chief Revenue Officer of Firefly Aerospace, reveals: the company went bankrupt, laid off 160 people, and almost died in a fireball on the test stand — then became the first private company to land on the moon and IPO'd at a $6 billion valuation.

THE REAL STORY: Before Firefly became one of only five private companies to ever reach orbit, Eric was sitting in an empty office under construction, agreeing to "come down for a year." Eighteen months later, the company ran out of money, got evicted, and laid off the entire team. Eric stayed anyway. A single voicemail left on the company's main line — from an investor nobody had heard of — brought it back from the dead with $200 million.

WHAT YOU'LL LEARN: 

◼️ Why a press release sent the day before shutting down may have saved the company 

◼️ How one act of basic respect turned into $140M+ in investment 

◼️ The test failure that almost killed the entire team and the company 

◼️ Why going bankrupt was actually the best thing that happened to them 

◼️ How video journaling helped him survive the hardest years 

◼️ What it actually felt like landing on the moon — and ringing the Nasdaq bell


ABOUT ERIC SALWAN: Eric was one of the first five seed investors in Firefly Aerospace before going all-in full-time. He held nearly every job at the company — IT, social media, spokesperson, business development, even drone photographer — before becoming Chief Revenue Officer. Firefly is now one of only five private companies ever to reach orbit and the first commercial company to land on the moon. The company IPO'd in 2025 at a $6B+ valuation, the most successful space and defense IPO of all time.


LISTEN ON ALL PODCAST PLATFORMS:

 🎥 YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel

🎧 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/0eNPRGM

🎧 Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/high-five-energy-founders/id1872142713

🎧 Everywhere you listen to podcasts


CONNECT: 

🌐 Website: jeffreychernick.com 

📸 Instagram: @H5EFounders 

📸 Host: @jeffreychernick 

💼 LinkedIn: jeffrey-chernick 


ABOUT THE HOST: Jeffrey Chernick is Managing Partner at Yellow Visor Ventures, and author of High Five Energy. He's a 3x founder (RideAmigos, Vyng — 20M+ downloads) with 20+ years building companies. Featured in TechCrunch, Forbes, NBC, LA Times.

#startups #founders #venturecapital #spaceindustry #moonlanding

Into

SPEAKER_04

What's up, guys? I'm Jeff. I'm a serial entrepreneur and an investor. And on this podcast, I sit down with the world's top founders to unpack how they actually build, scale, and think to help entrepreneurs get the tools and inspiration they need to succeed. Hey guys, how's it going?

SPEAKER_06

Good morning.

SPEAKER_04

So my name is Jeffrey Chernik, and this is Hi, I'm Alex Gitter.

SPEAKER_06

We co-authored our book, uh High Five Energy, a different kind of founder. And one of our interviewees is here today, Eric Salwan, to talk about his story.

SPEAKER_00

Hey everyone. Great to be here.

SPEAKER_06

So one of the things that's really cool about uh entrepreneurship, we've noticed you either dive right in, or maybe you come from a more corporate job and then decide to take matters into your own hands. And that's sort of what Eric did. So let's uh why don't you start uh take us to the beginning?

SPEAKER_04

Yeah, I mean, a lot of a lot of founders hear stories like yours, and they think, oh, this person must have gone to space school and they studied space and dreams about space their whole beginning and they knew they were going to be an entrepreneur. Tell us about the beginning of your story. What were you working on, and how did you first get interested in this amazing industry, this the space race?

SPEAKER_00

Yes, so I am an I was an IT consultant. I had an IT consulting company, and my friend Krista, who I'd gone to college with, married a rocket scientist. His name was Tom Markusic. So I had known them for 20 plus years at the time that Tom started his space company, Firefly Space Systems. And I knew that Tom was

Joining Firefly

SPEAKER_00

one of the few people in the world that can do something like that and make it successful. So as soon as they, as soon as he told me he was doing it, I said, I'm gonna be an investor in your company. And I became one of the first five seed investors. And then I eventually went to work full-time. I shut down my consulting company. I was I was there when they were building their main office, and I was just there in the empty office with Tom, still under construction, and he looked at me and he goes, Why don't you just come down here for a year? And I thought about it and I was like, I don't know if I could say no when someone says, Come work at my rocket ship company. And so I closed up my consulting company and went to work at the rocket company.

SPEAKER_04

Was there a moment for you at the rocket ship company where, in addition to that, you know, being asked, was there a moment that you were like, fuck, I have to go all in on this?

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, there was multiple moments where I said I had to go all in. And one of them was, you know, and and I moved down there in March of 2016, and we ran out of money and shut down in September of 2016. I was out here in California for New Year's of 2017, and um a friend of mine had invested in the in the company. It was um, you know, my the woman that I was dating at the time, and we had no longer been dating, and I was visiting her, and I told her we're shut down, we have no path forward, but I'm gonna go back and I'm gonna fight. And I made that decision and I went back and I decided I am not leaving until someone drags me out of here. There's gonna be handcuffs involved, there's gonna be the court order involved, because when I go tell my family and friends that I lost all their money, I'm gonna do it from jail. So that was it.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah, I want to read a quote that we have uh for your, you know, no coincidence. The chapter that that Eric is in is nothing dies until you say so, which is a big theme around entrepreneurship if you're a founder. You fire every bullet in the gun, then you throw the gun, and then you go hand to hand, and you don't quit until somebody shows up and drags you out of there.

Company Shuts Down

SPEAKER_00

And that's it. Yeah, that's that was my decision. And you know, I was like, well, we're gonna keep going until we get evicted. And then we got evicted and we still kept going.

SPEAKER_04

So tell us about that part of the story. So where were you in the company's trajectory when you did run out of money? How much money did you have you raised at that point? How many employees did you have? And then what did you do with those employees? How do you have those conversations? How did it go over? And how do you and I I get this a lot and I do a lot of advisory. How do you have those hard conversations with the team when they're the runway is running out? And how do you keep them motivated?

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, so we were raising our Series A, and it was a $30 million Series A. Six half of it came from Paul Allen's company, um, Vulcan or Vulcan Aerospace, and the other half was coming from a UK conglomerate. Brexit happened, and the pound crashed, and they were funding in pounds to US dollars. So they pulled out of the deal the week that they were supposed to send us the money. So $15 million disappeared, plus there was going to be another $16 million in contract. And we were burning a million dollars a week at that point, and we had 160 employees, so we just we hit the wall very hard. Um we asked everybody to work for minimum wage so that we can try and just keep the company going, and all of the employees, except for like two or three, agreed to do that. September 28th, 2016. We were sitting in the conference room, we were waiting to see if we would get a loan that could potentially extend the runway. And I said, and and we didn't have any money to open up the next day. So I said, I'll pay for tomorrow, which at that point was $10,000 a day, and I had $25,000 left, so I paid for that next day. The next day we came in and we knew in the morning that it wasn't gonna happen. So we got all but we were able to get all the employees together, and Tom, who is the CEO, got up in front of them, told him that we were shutting down, you know, he's crying, and um, you know, the the the like the thing that stands out for me in that moment was he was he said, Does anybody have anything to say? And one of the guys grabbed the mic, Chris, and he said, I just wanted to say thank you for giving us all the opportunity to do something that we've dreamed about our whole lives. And there was like a standing ovation. And I'm sitting there and I'm looking around, I'm going, like, this is bizarre. Like, we just laid off the entire company, and they're giving him a standing ovation, and that it was like the spirit at Firefly was that everybody was in there together. And from my side of it, incredibly painful because you you failed. This was 160 people that were counting on senior management, and I was one of the senior management to just keep going. And we didn't do it. And there was a guy, I remember that it was his first week at Firefly. He had quit his job, moved from California to Austin, and not only did he not have a job anymore, we couldn't even pay back his relocation expenses.

SPEAKER_05

Brutal.

SPEAKER_00

And that sticks with you. Like I still feel it in my bones.

SPEAKER_06

What do you do when you're navigating tough moments like that? Like as a person, do you have a meditation practice or journaling?

SPEAKER_00

Um so and and this you if you guys I'm on LinkedIn, but that when I was talking about that January 1st, 2017, I did do a journal entry. And it was my journal entry that said I'm gonna fight to the end. And I found it about a year ago, just randomly. And as I write the journal entry, I integrate it so it becomes my reality. And my reality was we are going to space. We are going to space, we are going to space. If we have to lift that rocket up on our backs and carry it there ourselves, we're going to space. And so once that's integrated, then there's no other path except for that path. And and like I'm I have a you know, spiritual, like this was always the spirit path for me. Um, you know, have a I live a spiritual life. And so if I'm on the spirit path, then I just go, and and that's you know, it carried me through.

SPEAKER_04

I just want to take a moment to talk about something that's really important to me and something I've been working on for years. If you like these conversations with founders, the mindset shifts, and the real questions behind building companies, I go much deeper on all that in my book, High Five Energy. I wrote it for people who are thinking about starting something or who already have, but want to lead with more clarity and purpose. The book gives you practical tools to get into high five energy flow state, attract the right people, and build in a way that actually feels aligned. High Five Energy includes interviews with 18 legendary founders who've had over 200 billion in exits and IPOs. If you're new to entrepreneurship or even just considering taking the leap, this book is for you. High Five Energy is available now wherever books are sold, or hit the link below. Now, is that the moment you guys did the last rocket test and did a press release about it?

SPEAKER_00

Yes. So we had we had done an engine test. When you build rockets, you have to build all the

The Press Release

SPEAKER_00

components. Then you test all the components and you build the systems. We had done what's called a full duration engine test, which is run the engine for the full amount of time it needs to get to space. Very few companies have ever done that at that time. And we had a guy that made a video and he was doing a documentary. By the way, the documentary should come out in a few months.

SPEAKER_05

Oh, cool.

SPEAKER_00

You guys are gonna watch what the cup. It's called To the Black, and the Black is Space. And um, just as a side note, like there was a guy that was doing um a customer story for our software vendor, and I was talking to him, he's a videographer, and I go, So what do you do? And he goes, I'm a documentary filmmaker, but he had never made a documentary before. He was just an aspiring documentary filmmaker. And I said, You should make a documentary about Firefly, and I convinced him to do it, and he followed us for seven years through this little didn't through the bankruptcy, through I mean, crazy, crazy shit. Wow. And now that documentary is coming out in a few months. So I got distracted. I can't remember what the question was, but keep an eye out for the documentary.

SPEAKER_06

So you're talking about the full engine test.

SPEAKER_00

Oh, the full engine test. So we do this full engine test, and it's a big deal. And this is 2016. Elon was talking about his um Mars program. It was coming up. And I in my head was like, hey, you know, people want to invest in SpaceX, but they can't. So if I put out a press release about this engine test, maybe people that will that want to invest in SpaceX but can't will invest in Firefly. And it was, I put it out on the 20, September 28th, one day before we shut down. And Tom, who was a CEO, is like, hey Tom, I'm doing this press release. He's like, you can't put out a press release that that when we're shutting down the company. And I was like, Yes, I can. And so I and I never done a I never wrote a press release before. That was my first press release, and we didn't have any money, so I put it on my personal MX card and I put out the press release, and it turned into a big article in an engineering, online engineering magazine, talking about this test and talking about all the problems that the company was having, and um had that video that was embedded that was just a beautiful, beautiful video. And then, you know, eventually we got new investors, and I think that was one of the things that they saw when they

The Voicemail That Saved Firefly

SPEAKER_00

were trying to do the research of the company.

SPEAKER_04

Well, it started with a voicemail, right? So you guys are completely done at the company. I think you might have gone to church and pray, if I'm not mistaken. And then you received an actual on a machine, a voicemail from uh from an investor. Talk us through that.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, so um there was somebody that wanted to invest in Firefly or wanted to find out more about Firefly. His name was Max Polyakov, um, Ukrainian with a US green card, and he had a guy that worked for him named Artium. And Ardium was trying to get in touch with someone at Firefly, and he tried to get in touch with the CFO. CFO was ignoring him. So he just called the main number and left a voicemail on the main number machine, and Christina, who is the HR person, heard it. And he has a he has he's he's um Belorussian, so he has an accent, and it's like we would like to talk to you about company or something like that. He actually that he speaks he speaks good English, but it's like he has the accent. And so Christina found Tom and she's like, There's this message on the machine, and they got in touch with the guy through many like ups and downs. Max Polykov ended up investing $200 million in the company, bringing us back from bankruptcy, and is the reason why Firefly exists today.

SPEAKER_06

Wow.

SPEAKER_00

And that started with that voice.

SPEAKER_06

Yeah, that's amazing.

SPEAKER_04

We talk about bread breadcrumbs a lot in the book, but also in these interviews. And you just when you push and you put things out there in the universe, you just don't know what will lead to the next thing, right? And it's still a mystery whether this one press release was the thing that took got the attention of Max and his team, but it it quite possibly was. Like that last ditch effort, throw the gun, go after it, never give up, do a press release the day before you're shutting down your company. And that one decision might have saved the company.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. And I'll I'll give you another example. So now we're restarted. Max is funding the company. He has his CFO is supposed to go raise all the money. He's working on it for like four years, zero. Only Max is funding the company, which is very upsetting for Max because he only wanted to put in 50 to 75, and now he's in for you know coming up on 200 million. And um I had met a guy at South by Southwest. He'd come up to our booth, super friendly, like banker, young guy. We became friends. He sent me an email one day, and he's like, and I introduced him to Mark, who is a CFO, as a potential, like he works with high net worth individuals. He sends an email to me and Mark and says, Hey, I'm gonna be in Austin. I'd love to come for a tour. And I'm traveling, I don't see it. I see Mark's response, and Mark's response is, look, let's be respectful of each other's time. If there's a deal to do, let's do it. Otherwise, let's just stick to emails. And I saw it and I was like, what the fuck? I was like, this is a friend of mine, and he wants to come for a tour, so I just responded back and I was like, hey, Mo, I'm out of town, I'll be back. Come by, we'll grab a beer, we'll do a tour, whatever. I sent an email to Mark and to copy Tom. And I'm like, hey, I thought we were trying to get investors. Maybe this guy can't do anything right now, but you never know what's going to happen in a couple years. And Mark responds back, let me give you my 25 years of wisdom. This guy is a middle-level banker, has no pull, can't do anything for us, will never be able to do anything for us. And he's a CFO, so he's like, he goes, absolutely no to a half-day VIP tour. Your job is to sell rockets, go sell rockets. So it was, it was, I was my head almost exploded. I gave Mo the tour, even though like I could have gotten, I don't think he would have he couldn't fire me because Tom is the CEO and he's my best friend. So gave Mo the tour, and then Max gave up his green card, couldn't fund the company anymore. We had you know, the money that we had in the bank. I sent emails to my friends, including Mo, and I was like, hey, we're raising our Series A. We need some help. Mo introduced us to his friend, told his friend to invest in Firefly. That guy became our Series A lead investor, put in $20 million, and set the valuation of the company at $1 billion.

SPEAKER_06

Wow.

SPEAKER_00

You never know. That same relationship continued to expand and resulted in over $140 million invested in Firefly.

SPEAKER_06

Wow.

SPEAKER_00

From treating someone with respect. And just I knew the kid was excited. I knew he liked Firefly. He wanted to help us. I gave him a half-day VIP tour. And it resulted in our Series A and Series D lead investors and over $140 million in investment.

SPEAKER_06

That's amazing. Say more about treating people with respect and how that pertains to the business world and perhaps beyond how what's your relationship to that? I think I have an idea, but say more.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, I mean, to me, relationships are gold. Um you never know. It's the breadcrumb theory. You never know where things are gonna lead. If someone is excited about what I'm doing,

Relationships Are Gold

SPEAKER_00

they may not be the person that is gonna help me, but they're gonna look for a way to help me. And who knows when it's gonna play out. So like I treat people with respect, I deal with them honestly or as honestly as I can, considering that you know, we've missed every schedule, every deadline, you know, you know, like we we are ruthlessly optimistic, and so when you're ruthlessly optimistic, things never really work out the way that you want them to, and then you just have to go back and apologize to people. Um, but you know, that that um desire to just talk to people that are excited about what I'm doing that saved the company. Like we were gonna we were had less than 30 days of runway left when we closed our Series A at Firefly Aerospace. We raised 175 million in that Series A, including 100 million that went to buy down Max. Out of that 175 million, 170 million came from my friends and their friends when I called, when I sent them an email and said, please help us. And they went out and they just told their friends, this is a good company, invest in this company. And their friends, I couldn't have talked to them because they didn't know who I was, they wouldn't have trusted me. But when their good friends go talk to them and say, you should trust these people, then it gets past that filter of bullshit. And it's like, okay, this this guy, you know, one of the guys was Jed McCaleb, who is a crypto pioneer. He did stellar and ripple um cryptocurrencies. His friend David called him up and said, invest in this company. He put in $150 million.

SPEAKER_06

It speaks to this idea of pedigree. And I think especially in entrepreneurship, not you're not always potentially the most qualified person in the room based on what you've done before, but it doesn't negate perhaps what you're capable of doing, especially when you have vision. I want to actually direct this question to you, Jeffrey. When you start something, typically is it something that you've had a ton of experience doing, or is it something that you are passionate about?

SPEAKER_04

Or tell me about the beginning of the I mean, for all of my ideas, it was just a problem I wanted to solve for myself. In 2007, I wanted to share a taxi. There was no there was no way to do that. There was no Uber. I started the first taxi sharing platform. I knew nothing about entrepreneurship or software. Then I 2013 a friend left a voice memo on my phone. I assigned it to his ringtone. So when he called me. I heard his voice as the ringtone. I was like, oh, like, why can't I control my identity on someone else's lock screen? And it turned into a video caller ID app that went viral in India when we had 20 million users at one point. It's the so the answer to the question is no, I usually have no clue how I would do that. And one of the chapters in the book is all really about the mind group. And it's something I talk to entrepreneurs about constantly, founders, who is the person that has already done the thing that you're trying to do? Because they're out there. Pretty much every idea that we have, it might not be the exact thing you're doing. There's someone out there that has done something similar and been really successful at it. So instead of trying to sort of like blindfold your way through the path and try and figure it out for yourself a little bit the hard way, maybe talking to some people along the way, how do you enroll advisors and co-founders and team members that have already been there? And things get a lot easier when you do that. And especially around the advisors, it's amazing what one phone call could do for a company from the right person because it could change your trajectory. Did you have advisors for Firefly, but also for yourself along the way?

SPEAKER_00

Um, for Firefly for sure. Like for me, like I had done a lot in my life prior to that, and this was something totally new. So I was winging it the entire time. And um, but we did have people at Firefly. We had an ex-four-star general, we had ex-secretary of the Air Force, um, we had people that believed in what we were doing. We had, you know, uh, ex-NASA administrator that came on board that like helped us and promoted us and told people trust these people. And having those voices stand behind you is immensely beneficial.

SPEAKER_04

Why do you think those people at the that pedigree agreed to come on board? Do you believe that it was Tom and the team? Do you believe it was the passion? The like what was the thing that allowed a four-star general to say, oh, I'll I'll spend time on this and help you guys?

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, I mean, first you have to get access to those people to even ask them the question. So, you know, we were fortunate. I think it was Max and his team that that was James Cartwright, um, who was the former vice chair of the Joint Chiefs. Right?

unknown

Wow.

SPEAKER_00

Um so they reached out to him, and then you have to bring him in and you have to convince him that you have the vision and you have the ability to go do it. And he is still helping us. He started helping us in like, I'm gonna say 2018 and still helps us because he has fun doing it. You know, he it's like he'll sit there and he'll review our proposals that we're submitting to the government and help us and help us understand because he's read so many proposals and he's had to award so much money. He can just look at it and be like, why are you doing this? Or why are you not doing this? And

Orbit and the Moon

SPEAKER_00

I sit there sometimes and I see him on these calls, and I'm like, This guy was second in charge of running the entire US military presence, and he's helping me with this proposal I'm submitting to NASA. And it's like he's just excited about it.

SPEAKER_06

That's amazing. Well, so tell us a little bit about where Firefly is now. Did we make it to space?

SPEAKER_00

We made it to space, and Firefly then became Yeah, round of applause. Firefly is one of the five-ish private companies that has ever um successfully launched a rocket to orbit. And we are the first commercial company to successfully land on the moon.

SPEAKER_05

Woo! Okay.

SPEAKER_00

So we we did a program with NASA called Commercial Lunar Payload Services, and we landed a robot on the moon. So prior to Firefly successfully doing that mission, only countries had landed on the moon. There was five countries, and now there's Firefly. So and and the cool thing about that is on that lunar lander, we put a plaque that has all of the employees' names on it. So my name is on the moon. That's pretty cool.

SPEAKER_06

Wait, is the robot still up there?

SPEAKER_00

The robot's still up there, but alone? It's it's alone. And it only lasts for two weeks because it's solar powered. And when the sun goes down on the moon, it dies.

SPEAKER_06

But it doesn't come back?

SPEAKER_00

No, because it when it gets to be like negative 200 degrees, and everything sort of freezes and warps, and then when it heats back up again, it breaks. Wow. So you know, in the future, you need some sort of like nuclear pellet or something, just some sort of heat source that keeps things warm. And they're not gonna trust us, like very few, you gotta get you gotta get it from the government. So they're they're not gonna trust us with like nuclear material before we actually prove that we could land on the moon. So we've now proved that we can land on the moon. So hopefully in the future, as we get more experience, we'll be able to um survive the night, is what it's called. So that two-week dark period on the moon, you have some sort of heat source that keeps everything alive.

SPEAKER_04

We talked a lot about the business side of things, keeping the lights on, runway, and your role in that. Meanwhile,

Building the Wrong Rocket

SPEAKER_04

you're sending these rockets into space, which oftentimes explode, especially in testing. Let's talk to us about the journey of the product, right? Because you have this product vision along the way, and this vision is to build something that's going to go out of our atmosphere into space, maybe land on the moon one day. Was it smooth sailing as far as the rockets go? And talk to us about that journey.

SPEAKER_00

It was never smooth sailing. It was 100% trauma and disaster the entire way. Um and like going bankrupt was the best thing that happened to us. We were building the wrong rocket. Like we were built, so we were working with Paul Allen. He was his company was built building um something called Stratalaunch, which was the biggest airplane in the world. And we were gonna launch the rocket from that airplane. It would like drop it and then it would take off. And that rocket was too small to do the missions that we need to do. And Stratalaunch ended up being way behind schedule and has only flown a few times at this point. So, like, we were building this rocket to fly off this airplane that didn't exist, that was going to be too small on a carrier that is not dependable. So when we went bankrupt, Tom had time to step back and he re-engineered the entire rocket. So now it's a vertical launch rocket. It takes twice as much payload to space. That's the rocket that we needed to be building. If we would have gone down that path, even if we would have been fully funded, we would have gone down that path to the end, and then we would have failed. And then we wouldn't have been able to restart because it would have been too late.

SPEAKER_04

Well, did you have rockets that just didn't make it?

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. So the first so rockets are built in stages. There's like a first stage that takes most of the way to space, and then when it runs out of fuel, you drop it, so you drop the dead weight, and then the second stage takes it the rest of the way to space. So the first stage has four engines on it, and the first one that we built, we were getting ready to test it for the first time. So call it 10 million dollars worth of effort just to build that thing and years to get it to that point. And we put it on the test stand. And there's software that looks at everything when you're getting ready to start the rocket, like how much fuel is going in, what's the temperature here, you know, what what's the pressure here? And anything that's outside of the parameters, it aborts the test, and those are called the aborts. So there's hundreds of abort criteria that are automatically checked as the rocket is starting up. Prior to doing the test, they had been using a file that doesn't have any aborts because they were just going through and making sure everything was okay with the system. They gave the abort file to the guy that's running the test, and they were like, hey, drop this file in this shortcut on the desktop so that we can update the aborts. Well, it wasn't a shortcut, it was a folder on the desktop. So when he dropped that file in that folder, it didn't go update it on the network. And so when we started the test, there was no abort file. So 22 things that would have aborted the test happened. And because there's no abort file, the test just kept going. One of the engines blew off into the field, started a giant fire. The entire thing, it was like this close to exploding the entire thing. And if it would have, it would have, it would have taken out all of the test infrastructure and it would have killed the entire company. But giant fire, you know, this is in Texas, they shut down this road in both directions. So traffic was backed up for three miles each direction. You know, every I mean it was it was it was it was this close to the phone.

SPEAKER_04

That's what everyone's thinking right now. Yeah.

SPEAKER_06

That's crazy.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, and I was so I was one of my many jobs was the drone video photographer. And this is this is the first this is the this is the first test. So nothing ever works the first time in rockets. So like I'm the drone guy, and I'm like, well, eventually this will work. So I'll take the drone out there and I'll get some practice flying the drone out there and getting it into position. But you know, these guys are they're not gonna, they're not gonna, it's not gonna work. So I fly the the test is getting ready to go and listening to it on the headset. I fly the drone out there, I get it into position. And then all of a sudden the the rocket engine, the rocket lights up, and I'm like, holy shit, I can't believe these guys did this. And then I'm watching through the drone and I'm like, oh shit, that's a fire going up the side of the rocket. I'm pretty sure that's not right. And I was the closest person to it because I was flying the drone. And I remember I was standing in front of my car and I'm still filming, and I'm like, oh, I should probably go on the other side of the car, duck down, so that if it explodes, then there's like a blast shadow from the car that will keep me from getting killed. But I still continued to video the whole thing, and then that video that that and then I gave it to the documentary film producer. So that video that I took is now in the documentary of the rocket starting on fire.

SPEAKER_06

Wow. That that moment too, what you said about one of your many jobs also strikes me as kind of like archetypal in entrepreneurship, wearing many hats and just doing what you gotta do to get the shot. Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

When they they like, so now I'm like inter, you know, initially when they first started the company, I was like interviewing to be the IT guy. And they were like, Well, what can you do for Firefly? And I said, Well, I can't build you a rocket engine, but I'll do everything else. And I I ended up doing like a ton of different jobs at Firefly. I was the social media guy, I was the press relay at liaison, the spokesperson, the IT director, the BD director. You know, I was I took out the trash because nobody, like when I first started working there, I walk into the bathroom and like the trash can is overflowing, and I'm like, what the fuck? Because I'm coming from Fortune 500 companies, and I'm like, what is going on here? There's a hundred engineers that work for the company, all, you know, and they're like, there's one men's room with a hundred guys, and there's like the trash can is like this big, and I walk in, it's overflowing. I'm like, what is in there? Oh, we don't have a janitor. So I was like, okay, well, where's the where's the dumpster? And they told me where the dumpster was, so I took out the trash, and then the next day it's overflowing again. So I'm like, fuck. So I take out the trash again, and this is going on for a while. I'm taking out the trash like two or three times a day. And I'm like, this is this can't be right. So I went and I told the HR person, I was like, Christina, please buy me a big garbage can for the men's room. And so she went and she found like this McDonald's plastic, ugly garbage can. And I was like, that's not no. And I was like, and I found the like human element, the the cool metal trash cans that were like what is a space company. Yeah, yeah. $200 each. And I was like, Christina, could we buy these trash cans? One for the men's room, one for the women's room. And I was like, I know it's a lot of money, but if we're still here in five years, it'll be worth it. And if we go bankrupt, the $400 isn't gonna matter. And this was before we went bankrupt the first time. So I left in December, and the last thing that I did was I went into the men's room and I took a picture of that garbage can because it's still there.

SPEAKER_04

So that was maybe one of the hardest things to watch. Talk to us about one of the most miraculous things to watch the first time you made it into space.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, I mean, the first so, and this is in the movie, like when you get to space, there's cameras all over the place on the rocket, and you have your rocket going into orbit around the earth, and you just see the earth underneath you as this giant blue bubble, and you're taking a picture of it from space with something that your team had built, and and then it like deploys a satellite, and you just see the satellite going into space, and it's like, holy shit, we did it, we did it, we did it. But I will the the the my favorite success was when we landed on the moon. So we have a moon landing party that we're throwing, we rent out this venue, we land on the moon at 2 39 a.m. on a Sunday morning. There was like close to 1,200 people at this event, and you know, it's fully automated because you can't control it over that distance. So you just basically check it out and then you say go. And there's no video because the bandwidth isn't high enough, so the only you're getting telemetry back, and the telemetry is basically your speed, your altitude above ground, and there's four foot pad sensors. So when they land, they trigger and they change color. So now it's getting closer to the ground, and there's 1200 people in this outdoor venue, and that expression you could hear a pin drop. I now know what that means because it was dead silent. Nobody was making a sound, and you see the velocity getting lower and lower, and you see the altitude getting lower and lower, and they both have to get to zero. And they did, and those foot pads changed color, three out of the four changed color, and the entire place just went bananas. Everybody lost it, and we landed on the moon.

SPEAKER_05

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04

So there's another iconic moment, and I've known you for several years, and uh, I when I saw Eric today, I haven't seen him since really the IPO, and he's since left Firefly. He feels very light. His whole

IPO Day

SPEAKER_04

vibe, his energy feels very light, and I've known him through the years, and it hasn't always been light, especially seeing him in these different times of the company's trajectory. Um, you guys did IPO, and that was a big deal to be on that path with a company, not knowing if there's going to be any end result monetarily. There's certainly the reward of flying to space. Talk to us about that. Talk to us about the the hopes, the dream, what did it feel like? Whether and and then and then since then, because now you're a public company and you sort of go around with the markets.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. So we IPO'd in August of last year, and we had the most successful space and defense IPO of all time. So we raised $1 billion and we IPO'd at a $6 billion plus valuation. And so that's from 2017 when we restarted the company. May 1st, 2017, we had 20 full-time employees. When we went public, we had 850 employees, and we had a six billion dollar company. Um we were in time, we basically took over Times Square. You know, the the there was a new investor relations guy that got hired, and he was like, okay, well, we're gonna have the senior leadership, you know, on stage at Nasdaq. And you know, my friend Olya, who is the chief of staff who's been there for years, was like, hang on a second. You've been here like three months. I'm planning this thing. So she rented a 777 and she invited every employee that had worked there for more than five years to bring their family, and she flew them all to New York, rented out hundreds of hotel rooms at Times Square, took over Times Square, did an installation with the Moon Landing. Everybody that had worked there for longer than eight years was on stage at the NASDAQ when we did the bell ringing. NASDAQ said it was the best IPO that they've ever done.

SPEAKER_06

Wow. There's a lot of heart in the in that company.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah, it reminds me of just the first story you told us when you announced bankruptcy and everyone's standing there applauding the company and thanking the company, and that same culture is at Times Square during the pinnacle of it. Talk to us about culture because now you're sort of out there and you're seeing the rest of the world bright-eyed, investing and being involved in new companies. How important is culture for you in a company? And what are some sort of key lessons that you've learned your on you are on your own journey with Firefly that you can convey around that?

SPEAKER_00

So culture is and it's an I I guess the harder it is the thing that you're trying to do, the more important the culture is. Because I saw a lot of people crumple at Firefly when when it got really tough, you see people just crumple. And then you see people that excel and you see people that stick with it. And so there's warriors at Firefly that, you know, we shut down the company, laid off 160 people, started it back up again. There were people that left, got other jobs, moved away. And when Christina called them and said, We want you to come back, they quit their job and came back to Firefly to start the company back up again. All 20 people that we started with when we restarted were former employees. And we got back, eventually we got back 40 out of the 160. And so those people were the were the backbone of the company, and they were maniacs. And then as the new people came in, that's what they saw. And so you need, like, especially in in this type of environment, you need people that are just ruthlessly dedicated to making a company succeed. And you have to encourage those people and you have to reward those people. And I think we we learned a lot of lessons, you know, on how you treat the people that are the heart of the company, and and that's really your gold. You know, like if you if you don't treat those people well and if they leave, they're irreplaceable. And so, like, your your high performers are your gold.

SPEAKER_06

I don't know what to say after that. Amen. Yeah.

unknown

Agreed.

SPEAKER_04

Well, it certainly starts at the top, right? Because you can't attract people like that if you're not like that at the top.

SPEAKER_00

No, Tom is the hardest worker that I've ever met in my entire life. Um, he's a lunatic. Uh his work ethic is beyond my comprehension. Really. And I'm I I am sort of a hard worker, you know. Like I didn't take a vacation from 2016 until 2023. Um yeah, like I would take off in between like Christmas and New Year's because there was not a lot going on, but I didn't like take a week off or take two weeks off or anything for that entire time. And paled in comparison to what Tom put into the company. And that's what I said at the very beginning. Like, I did not invest in Firefly or in a rocket company. I had no idea about anything with a rocket company. I invested in this person who I knew had the potential to do something that was nearly impossible.

SPEAKER_04

How did AI start affecting the company? Has it sort of evolved over the last one to two and a half years? And where do you see that taking the company, like the trajectory that the company was on from what 2017 to sort of 2022-ish? Then Claude, ChatGPT, are is the company utilizing that technology and how much faster will things go because of it?

SPEAKER_00

So, you know, we we can't use the external models because of the technology that we develop. I mean, we built a hundred-foot-tall rocket that's more sophisticated than most of the missiles that any country in the world can build, right? So we can't like put that into Chat GPT. So we have we have like an internal model that they can use. Um and you know, not being on the technical side, I really can't speak too much to like the the benefit of AI in the future for Firefly. We used a lot like early on, we used generative AI for doing some of the engineering tasks. Like for generative AI, you need to design a valve and you give it a bunch of different parameters, and then it will generate a bunch of different designs, and that gives you a starting point. So I know we were doing that, and we were using AI to help with some of the 3D printing. Yeah. But really, beyond that, I'm I'm I'm I was on the sale, I was a rocket salesman, so I was more on the the sales side.

SPEAKER_04

What was your biggest sale?

SPEAKER_00

Um, my biggest sale was a 25 launch contract with Lockheed Martin. And what was that worth? Uh $300 million. That's a sale. Yeah, that took seven, that took six years. Yeah, and then so and then the heartache is the first two launches of that contract were failures.

SPEAKER_04

So what happens with that? Do they just get two free extra launches or and and they're probably putting satellites in your rocket, the satellite. So so what happens in that scenario?

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, so my one of my my first solo sales call was to Lockheed Martin, which was a little high stress, like I didn't know what the fuck I was doing. And now I'm in with the guy that has 30 years of experience trying to sell him a rocket, and he knows much more about rockets than I ever than I did. It took seven years from then until um we launched a prototype satellite for them called LM400. It was the first of this new class of satellites that they then hopefully will get billions of dollars of business for. So from that first meeting, I had been wanting to launch that satellite, and then we finally got the contract to launch that satellite,

Worst Day at Firefly

SPEAKER_00

and the launch failed, and we destroyed the satellite. And they had put, you know, hundreds of millions of dollars into the development of that satellite. And I have to apologize to and this was the second failure that we had for them. And I have to apologize to them. And um, yeah, that's that's that that was my worst day at Firefly. That was worse than the bankruptcy, destroying that Lockheed Martin satellite.

SPEAKER_04

And then third launch?

SPEAKER_00

Third launch, it just happened, it was a successful yeah.

SPEAKER_04

Thank God.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, that just happened like a few weeks ago.

SPEAKER_04

Wow, yeah, yeah. What a uh stressful job you had. Yeah, no wonder you seem a little lighter. How you know Alex asked us earlier, and as you mentioned journaling, how do you get through this shit? Like, how do you this is this is a very, very high stakes, very, very expensive world that you're living in. How do you personally psychologically get through this and get to the next day?

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, so I

Meditation and Jornaling

SPEAKER_00

am spiritual, so you know, I meditate, um, I pray, I visualize. I spent a lot of time visualizing, you know, what um what does this look like to succeed? So I would do that pretty much every day. Um one of the things that I did after we started doing the documentary, I was I was like, oh, this documentary is a good idea. And I started a practice of doing video journals. Because like actually doing a journal and writing shit down takes a while. But I realized that like I can just sit in front of my computer and I can turn on the video thing and I can just vomit out whatever I'm feeling in that moment. And that was hugely beneficial because I'm it's not performative, it's not, you know, maybe I'll share it with somebody someday, but it's just talking to myself. And then later on, you could go back and like I can remember some of these really difficult times, but I don't remember the emotional content of it. I sort of remember that it happened. I can go back and I can see Eric from 2017 when we're just like still like trying to figure out what the hell is going wrong and he's freaking out. And I and when I see Eric, it brings all the emotions back. So I can actually feel what he felt in that moment. So, like, and and I've now told people as I'm talking to them and as they're starting these things, I I it's an amazing practice, just for yourself, because in in the process over the years, like I would be sitting down there and I would just go and randomly pick one of these videos from years ago. And it gave me an indication of like where I had been, where I am now. And a lot of times, especially if I'm looking at a video of Eric as he was freaking out, I'm like, okay, you survive that. You can survive this thing that you're in right now. And so I I I really do suggest that. It takes like a few minutes, you know. Maybe over the period of 10 years, I did it 30 or 40 times. And I I'm so happy that I did.

SPEAKER_06

It's very on brand because it's very Star Trek of you. Star date 427 computer. Help me.

SPEAKER_02

Hi, I'm David. Um, I'm very taken by your story and the achievement of a pri you know, your private company going to space. You s you you say you have a spiritual practice. And I I just wanted to get more clarity on what you feel is the um spiritual growth for humanity of having more presence in space, like versus focusing more on the earth or however you see it.

SPEAKER_04

Great question. I I love by the way, this is the kin. You haven't been here before, but these are the types of questions that show up at the kin, which I'm very proud of.

SPEAKER_00

So to me, you know, human nature is exploration. It's pushing edges. And to me, that is spiritual, right? It's like the creation process. Um I I did a lot of martial arts training, and the person that I trained with, he said a master is someone who can consciously and consistently create something from nothing. And so that is a spiritual path. Now, how does a space tie into that? It's like the greatest frontier. So spir to me, spirituality, which is inner space and outer space, are the two frontiers of humanity that we now have the opportunity to explore. You know, um 500 years ago or whatever, people were mostly just sustenance living. Right? We didn't have time to do stuff like this. Like we're working in the fields, we're hunting, we're trying to survive. We don't it's like, oh, I'm gonna take the morning off and go listen to this guy talk about a space company. No. So we now have the opportunity to like really explore like what is our connection to the universe, what is our connection to spirit, and we have the opportunity to go build a moon base and see what's on the moon, and then maybe build a Mars base, and that like talks to the human nature of exploration and expansion and frontier.

SPEAKER_03

Um I was wondering about the board of advisors you meticulously created for yourself later, and particularly created for Firefly. I'm wondering as I build my own board of advisors of smart people who can help me succeed, who can allow me to learn through their failures, and I'll have to learn on my own. How did you do that successfully? What advice would you give to me and I guess all of us as we're building our board of advisors to kind of get input and you know, intellectual investment? Um Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, so I was not the person that created the board of advisors. I worked with the board of advisors, but the board of advisor was created through networks.

SPEAKER_03

Oh, sorry, I meant like the metaphorical, like the people your best friends, like the people that support you in that way.

SPEAKER_06

You met in college, right?

SPEAKER_00

Oh, yeah, I mean I met my friend Krista in college. And it so again, this comes back to relationships, right? Like you have to be pretty ruthless about like creating networks of people that understand you, that support you, and that want you to succeed, right? And so that means get like that means getting out and talking to people, right? And and the reason Firefly was able to raise that money is because the engineers don't like doing that, right? They want to build their rockets. And like I was out for years evangelizing Firefly. And out of those years, let's call it seven years or eight years, talked to hundreds of people. You know, I I lost some friends, you know, trying to get them to invest in Firefly. I'd learned some lessons about like how hard to push. Out of those hundreds of people, two people came through. But those two people were responsible for over $290 million of investment into Firefly. And that was because they believed in me, they believed in Firefly, they believed in what we were doing, and that's because I formed deep relationships with people. And and I consider relationships to be uh the most important thing in doing something like this and and technical ability, right?

SPEAKER_06

And I'll just add to rooted in authenticity, right? Because to the breadcrumb crumb idea, you don't know what will lead to what, but as long as you are yourself and you connect with people that you genuinely, you know, vibrate with, who knows where that will lead. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04

100%.

SPEAKER_06

I'm sure you want to say something.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah, I'll just add take people out for coffee. Don't be intimidated by what they are or their title or how much money they have or how many followers they have. They're all just people. We have a theme in the book, everybody poops, right? We're all humans going through a human experience. Yeah, they

Take People Out for Coffee

SPEAKER_04

were where you were at some point in their lives. So a big key to building your sort of mind group, your advisory group, the people that are gonna help you along the way is just being nice and friendly and having, you know, asking them about their career. And it's like, hey, would you mind doing a 20-minute Zoom with me? Really fascinating to see like your journey. And if they say no, fine, we'll go to the next person and never get bogged down by how many people say no. Because for every 10 people who say no, maybe five people will say yes or four people say yes. And you and my favorite line in these conversations is toward the end is you know who you should talk to. And those are the people that are going to be the best matches. And then it's not, it doesn't just end there. So then when you have those meetings, you you update those people, send them an email, send a text, just want to let you know, you know, I took to what I took what you said to heart and I did this thing. If you follow someone's advice and and then give them an update that you followed their advice and this positive thing happened, whether they like it or not, they're on your journey now, right? They're part of your advisory board, whether they chose, like they, they by by doing that, they're automatically opted in. And people love helping people, especially when that got positive feedback loop. Oh, wow, I I gave advice to somebody, they followed it, and now it's positive. So if you do that for the next 10 years, you know, and keep going, your network will be unstoppable, right? So that would be my advice on that front.

SPEAKER_00

That's amazingly good advice.

SPEAKER_01

Remarkable story, and just all the tenacity and the will and then your spiritual practice that came into it. And as entrepreneurs, I'm wondering, just from your perspective, because this comes up probably in a lot of discussions, especially at this great forum that you guys created, is the idea of good companies and great companies. Why do they fail? Like at the leadership, from your perspective, because you had this will, you had this spiritual practice,

Why Companies Fail

SPEAKER_01

but there's always a shadow of doubt sometimes in an entrepreneur, and you're there and you're moving your teams, and then something, and maybe that shadow it's that shadow of doubt or not that spiritual practice that says, I'm giving up. But what from your perspective and the will and the drive to get Firefly where it is now, what do you think stops that entrepreneur in their tracks? And then there's something that fails, and a good company or even a great company doesn't make it.

SPEAKER_00

So early on in this thing, I was sitting in the kitchen with uh Tom, and we were talking about everything that was going wrong. And I just looked at him and I was like, you know, Tom, not everyone survives. And he was like taken aback. He was like, What the fuck? You're supposed to be the optimistic guy here. And I'm like, I am, you know, but really it's I know that there is the possibility of failure, and you actually have to plan for that failure, but then you work ignoring that failure. Like you never give other than planning, like, okay, if we have to shut down and go bankrupt, we have to have a bankruptcy lawyer, and we gotta do this and this and this. So you uh you have to responsibly plan for that and then totally ignore that possibility. And not everybody survives. And you know, like we were blessed and fortunate, and I'm super grateful that we did. And I don't I don't know what, you know, I don't really know how to answer that question.

SPEAKER_06

I'll just put it in terms of space metaphor. Shoot for the moon and you'll land amongst the stars.

SPEAKER_00

And at Firefly, we call that mission failure because we were supposed to land on the moon.

SPEAKER_04

I love that. Well, um well, thank you so much. So this is uh Alex and I's book, High Five Energy, really about when you lean into what you're supposed to do in life with your full passion, all of your energy, you get a voicemail from Max that saves your company. Things just sort of happen magically. We call that state high five energy. It includes my own journey, but also uh Eric's journey and 17 other founders with over 200 billion at exit. So Priceline, Dollar Shave Club, Natera, Esri, some iconic companies, LegalZoom. So uh if you're interested, of course, I was a number one on Amazon for starting a business, which I'm proud of. We have a box here if you want to come up here and buy one, that's cool too. Uh and then the last announcement we um, which is the a big announcement, Eric is that we're having a big celebratory dinner tonight with a bunch, like maybe 17 of the founders that are in the book in the podcast. So I do this every month, and we're essentially creating a founder collective, high five energy founder collective, sort of like a virtual membership where we're doing uh a fundraising webinar every month because a lot of people are interested in fundraising. So this month is gonna be Bam Ventures and Open Sky Ventures Consumer. We'll do prop tech, we'll do early stage, late stage every month a webinar. Uh these as well as uh once a month, we're gonna have one of the founders from the book do sort of like a private uh Zoom meeting with the with the crew to actually get real deep on with the topics of the book and uh a place for the the like the founders like yourselves, right? The early stage founders, first-time founders, second-time founders to be able to communicate with some of the most legendary founders that are out there that are trying to give back. That's the platform we're trying to create. So uh you'll hear more about that. But thank you so much. Thank you, Eric. Thank you, Alex. And thank you, Ken. So really appreciate everybody. Thanks so much. If you got value from this conversation, make sure to subscribe so you don't miss future episodes. This podcast is about sitting down with people who've actually built things and unpacking the mindset, decisions, and moments that make the difference. Thanks for being here. Thanks for listening, and I'll see you next time.