An Unsuspecting Entrepreneur in the Space Business

In the winter of 2004, I had been working at my first job out of college for four years; while it had been a good run and rewarding learning experience, it became clear to me that my career had stalled when I realized the most exciting part of my workday was the time I spent talking car-stuff during my lunch breaks. Since my joining, the company had taken a direction that didn't align well with my personal interests - it was clearly time to look for new opportunities. So, on my first day back from New Year's break, still filled with the fresh determination of a new year resolution, I walked straight into the Monday morning staff meeting, proclaimed that I had decided to leave, and gave my two weeks notice. Of course, I had done some prep-work to feather the landing in the previous weeks (who jumps out of an airplane without packing a parachute?), but little did I know that this would be the first step to remaking myself into a successful small business owner.

My next job was still as an employee with a small (2 person) company by the name of Holder Consulting Group (HCG). The owners of HCG were two former coworkers of mine at my first job. At some point in the past, when our employer went through financial difficulties and had to lay them off, they had decided to strike out on their own. HCG is an aerospace consulting firm, and at the time was working two large contracts for t/Space and AirLaunch; both entrepreneurial spaceflight companies testing cutting edge launch vehicle technologies out of the Mojave California spaceport (also the home of Scaled Composite's SpaceShipOne). On my first day on the job, I flew from Seattle to Mojave, and in one day got my hands on more spaceflight hardware than I had ever even seen in all my career up to that point - including SpaceShipOne. For a committed space engineer like me, it was the best day since watching the TV broadcast of the Apollo Moon landings. Little did I know, it would just keep getting better.

About a year into my time with HCG, things were going great. The company philosophy was based on a three-fold approach to aerospace projects, combining comprehensive industry awareness with solid business acumen and cutting-edge technical expertise. HCG's two partners (Livingston Holder and Curtis Gifford) formed the first two legs of that tripod, and I rose to the challenge to support the third. While finishing my PhD at the University of Washington part-time, I worked on a wide variety of problems ranging for reliability analysis of a fleet of space exploration vehicles, to full-scale drop test of a new space capsule design, to the thermodynamic challenges of vapor-pressurized (VaPak) rocket propulsion. It was smoke and fire and noise and parachutes, it was soldering avionics in my hotel room, avoiding snakes in the Mojave desert, and hanging over the rail of a fishing trawler commandeered as a telemetry ground station; and it was real. Doing analysis is educational, building and breaking stuff is fun!

As my commitment to the success of the company became evident, all of us agreed to make me a third (equal) partner. The success of HCG - recently rebranded as Holder Aerospace - is based on providing a unique service not filled by other companies. Due to the unusual diversity in the experience base of the partnership, we are able to look at space engineering problems from all aspects, and arrive at the most effective solution. This also allows us to pursue funding from a variety of sources. We work with entrepreneurial space companies, who need help interfacing with the more traditional culture of government funded "large" aerospace. We work with large traditional companies, who wish to become more agile and have short time surges in their need for expertise. We bid on government funded contract (NASA, DARPA, etc.) of our own. And above all, we always deliver - even when it costs us on the bottom line. Far over 90% of our business is derived from repeat customers, or referrals of existing customers. The inclusion of well seasoned business expertise in our team ensures a laser sharp focus on our customer's needs, getting the most out of the resources they make available to us.

Don't get me wrong, it hasn't been all fun & games. Being a small business owner implies substantial risk, and the paralysis of the domestic aerospace industry following the administration change severely affected our business. Only since President Obama has published a clear path for the nation's space program has business started to grow again. However, the rewards of charting your own destiny and doing what you are really passionate about are tremendous. It is extremely important to partner with the right people - complementary skill sets, experience and character disposition are absolute necessities. Choosing your business partners is just as difficult and the consequences are as profound as those of choosing a spouse. I was very fortunate to meet the right people at exactly the right time. And lastly, if there is one lesson that I want anybody who reads this article to take away from it, it is the following: when you combine entrepreneurial creativity and agility with no-nonsense business practices, and the right opportunity for serious money, magic happens. Every time.