Thread by @LionnetPierre

@SeraphimCapital recently issued its intersting 2020/Q4 Space Index, seraphim.vc/wp-content/upl… highlighting "private investor’s unprecedented appetite for Spacetech". Now, looking at the data I would like to understand where Seraphim sets the boundary for "Space" 1/6

Indeed when looking a the list of Q4 'mega deals' provided by @SeraphimCapital I am surprised to see two companies whose business is not "space" at all. They are Joby Aviation (Air taxi, formerly Uber Elevate) and Percepto (autonomous robots and drones). 2/6

I do understand that these companies will make use of space based services such as GNSS and/or remote sensing data, but labelling them 'Space' is an exageration. With the same reasoning, shall we now consider that Deliveroo and Uber are part of the space sector? 3/6

With this in mind, I am now asking myself: are the reporting of billions raised by 'space' start-ups purported by such companies as @SeraphimCapital , @SpaceCapital , @BryceSpaceTech actually relevant to the space sector? Are these figures an exageration? 4/6

In fact, based on my near-obsessive scrutiny of space start-ups (and my ever growing list of 1000+ companies) I believe that about 5-7B$ have been wrongly attributed to space space start-up funding in the past decade. That is error margin of at least 20%! 5/6

For me the space sector starts with the companies that design, develop and manufacture space systems (spacecraft, launchers and professional ground segment) and ends with the companies that buy and operate the space systems. All others are customers/users, i.e. verticals. 6/6

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