I applied and interviewed in the two weeks between flight three and flight four of Falcon 1<\/a>. I interviewed with Elon; he was still interviewing pretty much everyone at the time. I remember going back to my advisor and saying, “There’s nothing I’d rather do on the planet than what he just described.”<\/p>\n My Master’s ended at the end of 2008, and I began in 2009.<\/p>\n I was on what’s called the propulsion analysis team, which was four or five people. Our responsibility was: How do you design the first reusable rocket engine? A very small group of us was responsible for the initial stuff that was on Falcon 9<\/a>.<\/p>\n A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket carrying a payload into space.\u00a0<\/p>\n Paul Hennesy\/Anadolu via Getty Images<\/p>\n I started there when I was 23, and I left when I was 27. It was a little bit of naive immaturity. I knew I wanted to start a company one day, and SpaceX was growing like crazy. I wanted to be on a founding team. I still love the company; I almost went back two or three years later before I ended up starting a company of my own.<\/p>\n The IPO<\/a> is pretty cool. I’m on a bunch of text threads with guys who were there around the same time, and a couple of them are still there. It’s cool to see just how big it became.<\/p>\n When I got there, and they gave the offer, there was an equity component. I remember the HR woman who was going over it with me saying, “We think some day, in 10 or 15 years, this might be worth $250,000-300,000.” I distinctly remember her saying, “It might get you a nice down payment on a house in Los Angeles.”<\/p>\n We all laugh about it now. But, at the time, the saying was: the fastest way to become a millionaire in space is to start as a billionaire.<\/p>\n Buybacks have been really regular for the last 10 years. Every now and then, we’d take a little bit out. For example, we paid off my wife’s student loans<\/a> a number of years ago. We put down a down payment on a house.<\/p>\n I joke: We did actually get a down payment on a house! She wasn’t lying when she said that. It’s a house that, on our normal salaries at startups, we wouldn’t have been able to afford without that additional windfall.<\/p>\n We also love traveling. We’ve got a seven-year-old and a one-year-old. We’re going to go on slightly more adventurous trips because of it.<\/p>\n My wife is also thinking of doing a larger career change that would come with a decent salary reduction<\/a>, which she probably wouldn’t have been able to do without something like SpaceX.<\/p>\n Professionally, I’ve always been risky. If the majority of your net worth is tied up in a rocket company, you must be a risk-tolerant individual.<\/p>\n Gambit is a VC-backed company. We’ve raised about $15 million to date, and there are a couple more investment rounds that are coming. The IPO puts you in a position where folks with a substantial amount of equity could be interested in becoming investors.<\/p>\n At least ten of the people I worked with intimately have started their own company. There was a band that I played in with five SpaceX people; four of us started our own companies. I played guitar.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n