When Spaced Ventures Inc. launched a petition this month to get SpaceX to joins its equity crowdfunding platform, CEO Aaron Burnett was stuck in a dentist chair at a “poorly timed appointment,” he told Orlando Inno.
Burnett checked his phone as often as he could — between spits, he said — to find out how the Melbourne-based startup’s attempt to convince the “white whale” of space firms to fundraise on its website was going. “The lady taking my blood pressure took it five times because she said, ‘It’s not right.’ I said, ‘I’m going through one of the most anxiety inducing things I've ever done.’ ”
Spaced Ventures recently launched an online petition asking potential investors to pledge the money they would be willing to invest in SpaceX if the rocket company founded by Elon Musk accepted investment from the public, something it currently doesn’t do. Spaced Ventures set a goal of $10 million in pledged investments, which it already has surpassed.
The mission is a long shot, but it would open up investing in SpaceX to the masses for the first time. Hawthorne, California-based SpaceX is a private company, and it typically raises funds from corporations, venture capitalists and private equity firms it seeks out. Everyday investors who want to own a piece of the company, valued at more than $100 billion, must buy shares on secondary markets.
Meanwhile, Spaced Ventures operates a public investment portal where aerospace firms curated by Spaced Ventures can seek investment from anyone in the U.S., Canada and U.K. who are 18 or older.
This isn’t the first attempt to petition SpaceX to join a crowdfunding site. Crowdfunding service WeFunder launched a similar campaign with a $5 million goal, but it only raised $2.9 million in pledges.
Of course, Burnett acknowledges it will be tough to get SpaceX’s attention. Meanwhile, the pledges from potential investors aren’t binding, and they may not all actually invest as much money in SpaceX as they claim they would. Even if SpaceX were to agree to raise funds through Spaced Ventures, it would take months of negotiations before a fundraising campaign could go live, Burnett added.
Still, Burnett said he believes SpaceX joining a platform like Spaced Ventures would show it’s open to buy-in from the masses, despite not trading its shares on public markets. “It sends the message that we’re not anti-public; we’re against the regulatory regime.”
Spaced Ventures — an alumnus of Orlando accelerator StarterStudio and a member of Melbourne incubator Groundswell — has grown its investor base more than 600% from 1,700 last October to more than 12,000 today. The startup also has analyzed hundreds of potential companies, hosting five campaigns on the platform so far, Burnett said.
The first person Burnett pitched on the idea behind Space Ventures was Lilian Myers, former executive director of StarterStudio. At the time, the regulatory changes that enabled such a portal were a couple years from becoming reality, but Burnett's heavy research, risk calculations and additions to the team made the company ready to capitalize when the portal launched last year, said Myers, who now invests through Spaced Ventures. "That vision, he has implemented it in a way that I rarely see someone do."
Sign up here for The Beat, Orlando Inno’s free newsletter. And be sure to follow us on LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter.
