Thread by @trengriffin

1/ Gwynne Shotwell: "The total addressable market for launch, with a conservative outlook on commercial human passengers, is probably about $6 billion. But the addressable market for global broadband is $1 trillion."

SpaceX is a communications business.

interactive.satellitetoday.com/via/may-2021/a…

2/ Shotwell: "Starlink is best set up to serve rural villages and the rural population. We can do work in the city, but you can't put enough bandwidth down in a city to cover any sort of percentage of consumers in that cell." We want Starlink to look like consumer electronics."

3/ Shotwell; "We are definitely focused on consumer first. Not that we're not looking at enterprise markets — we definitely are. But the priority and emphasis are always on the consumer."

Consumer markets not served by fiber are a vastly bigger total addressable market.

4/ Shotwell: "I have a harder time seeing SpaceX as a public company. The business is too lumpy. We invest so much in R&D — large double digits. The markets don't love that. I don't see SpaceX making sense as a public company right now. But Starlink could make sense."

5/ Because launching rockets is so sexy and cool it causes people to ignore that the biggest markets enabled by space are on the ground. Rocket launch is a $5 billion dollar business. SpaceX is making it cheaper. Ground equipment for satellites is a $130 billion dollar business.

6/ Wait! Are you saying that the big markets are what these very cool rocket launches enable and not the launch business itself? Like user terminals? This is unquestionably true.

7/ Wait! Does that mean that SpaceX's expenditures will overwhelmingly happen and involve equipment on Earth rather than in space? Yes.

8/ Wait! What devices can't be served with two way communications by fiber and will need ubiquitous access to connectivity ? Maybe devices that have wheels that "go round and round"? Planes, trains and automobiles?

9/ Test flight of Starship SN15 is not happening today. SN16 is being built now (picture from today). Since the goal of SpaceX is to make thousands of Starships, there's focus on low cost production. If another low volume expendable rocket is a jobs program, it has a BIG problem.

10/ Gwynne Shotwell seems like a strong complement to Elon Musk.

Two examples I've seen at close range:

Bill Gates had Jon Shirley and Mike Maples etc.

Craig McCaw had John Stanton and Jim Barksdale, etc.

The best entrepreneurs don't replicate themselves on leadership team.