Lars Alminde co-founded GomSpace in 2007, one of Europe's first New Space companies, at a time when ESA openly dismissed their technology as "not something we're ever going to use." Fast forward 18 years, ESA is now a customer of GomSpace, and Lars has lived through nearly every crisis a space founder can face. He stepped down as CEO after seven years, watched the company go public with a 6x stock surge, then saw it nearly die twice - once from cancelled contracts in 2019, then again from a devastating stock crash in 2023 - before reaching profitability in 2025.

In this episode, Lars shares the unfiltered reality of building in European space: how university consulting revenue from day one kept them alive, why stepping down as founding CEO was his best strategic move, and what he learned from surviving 2 decades in one of the world's most unforgiving industries.

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Chapters:

(00:00) Introduction

(02:27) How a Student Project Became a Career

(04:11) Two Satellites Failed & He Still Started a Company

(08:16) "We'll Never Use This" - ESA Before Signing Their Contracts Years Later

(15:24) First Success: GOMX-1 Changes Everything

(18:29) Stepping Down as CEO After 7 Years

(23:31) Going Public: The IPO That Changed Everything

(28:47) First Near-Death: Major Contracts Cancelled

(34:00) Second Near-Death: Stock Crashes 90%

(37:02) New CEO, New Strategy: From Growth to Profitability

(42:39) 18 Years to Profitability

(44:26) The One Lesson From Years of Experience

(45:32) Rapid Fire Questions

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Takeaways:

1) Plan your CEO exit before burnout forces it - "I couldn't keep working 150% for all of my career. And when you're the CEO, there's a lot of things you have to do because you're the CEO, which distracts you from where you can make your most important contributions." Lars stepped down after 7 years when he became a father, recognizing he needed to shift from CEO duties to his technical core strengths.

2) If you're even thinking about stepping down, take it seriously - "If as an early stage CEO, you're even thinking about it, then you know there's something to take serious. Be curious, explore your feelings and your priorities. Do I need to be in this company for another three years? At some point, you have to make your career plan or you just get overwhelmed by all of the work."

3) During crises, protect your personal life or you'll suffer constantly - "If everything you have is the business and the business suffered, then you suffer all of the time. If you also have a family, take your mountain bike in the forest on the weekend. If you have other interests, then you can distance from it and see the business is suffering, I'm doing what I can to fix it, but I'm okay."

4) Radical transparency with employees helps everyone plan better - "The more people know, the better they are able to add and plan." After nearly dying twice, GomSpace now emphasizes extreme transparency.

5) Stop selling your tech stack, start selling outcomes - "I think for most new technology it's about transitioning from being excited about a technology to have applications and customers who are excited about what that technology can do for them."

6) Find real end users early - "Think beyond the grants and the government subsidies and think about what's the real application this technology can provide and make sure to get in contact with that group of end users as early as possible."

7) Think in multiple scenarios, but don't focus on failure - "When you need to make that big adjustment, you have to think in multiple scenarios because there always are multiple scenarios. One of them is not making it, but it's just one of many scenarios.

8) Success is about staying in the game long enough to catch opportunities. In the early years, Lars didn't know on the 20th of each month how he'd pay salaries by the 30th - but he always found a way to stay alive another month.

Philip Johnston is the CEO and Co-founder of Starcloud, a YC-backed startup building data centers in space to solve AI's growing energy crisis. After working at Goldman Sachs and consulting for Middle Eastern space agencies, Philip assembled what he calls "the 10 most kickass engineers in the world" from thousands of candidates. Their mission: create gigabit-scale orbital data centers with 4km solar arrays that could fundamentally transform computing infrastructure.In this episode, Philip reveals his journey from being rejected twice by YC to securing $21M in funding and preparing to launch Starcloud's first satellite this year. He explains why his small, elite team is developing technology to run NVIDIA's H100 chips in space (the first time in human history), their rapid 18-month satellite development cycle, and why conventional terrestrial data centers simply cannot scale to meet future AI energy demands.-----------------------------------------------Chapters:00:00 Introduction02:02 Growing Up with a YC Founder Brother04:28 Why Trading Skills Are Useless for Entrepreneurship12:13 The Starbase "Holy Sh*t" Moment That Started It All16:42 The First Angel Investor Who Changed Everything21:03 Why Redmond (Not LA) Is the Real Space Capital23:47 Y Combinator & The Viral White Paper That Got Them Roasted29:29 Over 200 VCs Reached Out: The $11M Round in Days32:35 Hiring Only 10 People: The World's Most Elite Space Team37:27 First to Fly NVIDIA H100s in Space42:20 Quick Fire Questions: Why Humanity Will Wipe Itself Out47:52 Why Your Crazy Idea Probably Sucks-----------------------------------------------Takeaways:1) Exposure to high achievers eliminates the impossible - "One thing that having an identical twin brother gives you is... it teaches you what is possible. If he can do something, there is no reason I shouldn't be able to do it." 2) Traditional finance experience is worthless for founders - "I would not recommend anybody become a trader if you want to be an entrepreneur... trading is an incredibly niche and non-transferable skill set." 3) Best founder training: startup experience beats everything - "The best path to founding a company is to go work for a startup." Philip's clear hierarchy of valuable pre-founder experience places startups at the top, followed by management consulting, with VC and trading trailing far behind.4) Lead with your most audacious vision, not incremental steps - Philip's biggest fundraising regret was initially pitching short-term vision: satellite edge computing instead of his revolutionary vision for orbital data centers.5) American angels wire money immediately; Europeans wait for others - "American angels are like absolute godsend because they sign and wire on the same day... in Europe they're like, who else is in?" The cultural difference in investor behavior meant Starcloud's first check came from an American who decided independently without needing social proof.6) Move your company to the talent, not where "space companies go" - "Everybody we want to hire lives in Redmond, Washington... for satellites, Redmond's like the global capital." Philip relocated from aerospace hub El Segundo when he discovered 90% of satellites were actually designed and built in Redmond.7) Hire slowly: interview thousands to find your 10 perfect engineers - "We spent an enormous amount of time interviewing and not hiring lots of people... we went through about 10,000 CVs." Starcloud's elite 10-person team resulted from an extraordinarily selective process that rejected thousands of qualified candidates.8) "Build it and see" beats "spend months in CAD" - "We are very much a build it and see culture rather than a spend six months in CAD and see culture." Philip's team prioritizes physical prototyping and testing over extensive theoretical design, accelerating their development cycle dramatically.

Lukas Werling is the CEO and co-founder of ISPTech, a German space startup developing green propellants that eliminate the need for hazmat suits and could slash space propulsion costs by 75%. The company has in a short time secured €2 million in funding with three orbital missions lined up for flight later this year.

In this episode of Rockets and Radars, Lukas shares his journey from a mechanical engineering student rejected from aerospace programs to spending 14 years at DLR (Europe's premier rocket testing facility) before selling his motorbike to raise startup capital. From supervising thousands of rocket engine hot firings to managing Europe's most unique test facility, from watching technicians in hazmat suits handle toxic propellants to developing fuel safe enough to handle with bare hands, Lukas explains how patient research and perfect timing created a company that had paying customers before it even officially launched.

Want to get hired in ISPTech? https://tally.so/r/mOq9b7

Want to invest in ISPTech? https://tally.so/r/nGE4qp

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Chapters:

(00:00) Introduction

(03:09) Getting Rejected

(08:00) Breaking into DLR

(14:34) Finding the Perfect Co-founder

(21:01) The Spin-Out Decision

(30:32) Incorporating with €25K: Selling the Motorbike

(35:56) Getting First Customers Before Incorporation

(44:36) Funding Journey: €2M Pre-Seed

(51:17) Future Vision: Space Infrastructure & Mobility

(54:34) Quick Fire Round: Biggest Mistakes & Key Decisions

(58:52) Advice for Researchers

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Takeaways:

1) Persistence beats rejection - keep asking until someone says yes. "I talked to my professor during his lectures. I went to his office several times... he was always saying, yeah, I will reach out." Lukas got into DLR by repeatedly asking his professor for an introduction until he finally made the call.

2) Technology maturity trumps perfect business plans for deep tech - "We had like years and years of testing at the test bench... many companies didn't have those possibilities." Having proven technology from 14 years of research gave them customer confidence that business plans alone couldn't provide.

3) Know your customers' pain points before you spin out - "We knew some spacecraft manufacturers, some people... what their issues are, what their pain points are." Don't guess at market needs - work directly with your future customers to understand their problems first.

4) Hire people you've worked with for years, not strangers - "The first people we hired were from this... student team... We know them for years." Your early team should be people whose work quality and character you've personally witnessed over time.

5) Speed beats bureaucracy when markets are moving fast - "We can decide, we can make progress as a company much, much faster... people from DLR approaching us, ah guys, can you do it so fast?" Startup agility is your biggest advantage over large institutions.

6) Never start work without a written contract, no matter who asks - "The biggest mistake I made is to start some work... without a written contract... it never materialized." Even trusted contacts can disappear - always get agreements in writing before starting any work.

7) Build your network before you need it - "We had our network. Of course, we knew some spacecraft manufacturers... this was an advantage." Relationships built over years become customers and partners when you're ready to commercialize.

8) Focus on customer contracts, not just grant funding - "We need, just frame contracts... As a company you want customers and not additional grant funding." Paying customers validate your business better than government grants ever will.

9) Plan backwards from your vision to find the first step - "You want to build this huge power plant... plan backwards... solve one issue after the other." Break dreams into manageable technical problems you can solve sequentially.