Founders And Funders

You don't have to be an expert in a field to know how to make good investment decisions around it. Bruce Cahan shares how successfully funding any pioneer economy often requires knowledge from other fields. (Listen) Episode Summary: Though Bruce Cahan has been involved in a wide range of activities throughout his career, he says that one of the most unlikely pivots he’s made is to look at how we're going to bank and finance space exploration. Given that space is a 70-year-old industry, you might be wondering why this has to be considered at all. Aren’t we already funding space? Bruce explains that the government invested in space for defense and other activities during the Cold War, but budgets dedicated to space agencies flatlined after that. Recently, however, smartphone technology (the ability to carry a supercomputer in your pocket) has inspired innovators to take a different look at how we build space assets like satellites, robotics, imagery, and so forth. Though the engineering has advanced, thinking