Investing venture capital into new space and space adjacent companies.
Overview
| Company | |
|---|---|
| Headquarters | Toronto, Ontario |
| Founded | 2022 |
| Founder(s) | Jared Bottoms, Mark Russell, Tahir Merali, Jonathan Leong, Gary Lifshits, Marek Lorenc |
| Ownership | Private/Public |
| Media | |
|---|---|
| Website |
Description
Celestial Growth Corp. is a Canadian venture capital company dedicated investing in "new space" companies. New space doesn't have a strict definition yet, and some use it to mean commercial space, while others mean the application of space to global challenges such as climate change, demographic development, migration, shortage of resources, conflicts and catastrophes, energy, digital divide, health and curiosity. The company's communications seems to imply both, but leaning towards commercial space.
Venture Capital firms generally assume that most startup they invest in will fail. Also assumed is those which succeed will more than pay for the bets placed on the losers. Choosing companies most likely to succeed becomes very important.
Celestial Growth's target is to find and invest in companies that are highly scalable and founder controlled. They want to invest in companies that have near term revenue (i.e. their business model is already working) and are between seed and series D funding (i.e. not too early, but not too late in proving the concept). These factors help filter out the riskiest of bets and improve the odds of investing in a company with amazing returns.
Celestial growth makes the distinction between "direct space" and "space adjacent" companies. The company considers a company direct space if it does things in or around space. This might include space debris mitigation, space and resource exploration, human spaceflight and tourism, observation (Earth and others), communication facilitation (e.g. internet of things, quantum networks) launch and propulsion, or manufacturing.
The company also invests in "space adjacent" companies, those not directly in space, but which support the sector. Here the possibilities expand enormously, but some interesting highlights include advanced manufacturing, ground and network operations, health, material science (like R&D into solar cells, battery cell chemistry, composites and ceramics).
Importance to Canadian Space
The formation of a dedicated space sector venture capital fund is important to Canadian space because private investment can be more aggressive than government investment. While modern governments need to take fairness, equal opportunity and many other social ideals into consideration, private investment can focus on what is most needed to grow an ecosystem.
Seeing startups as experiments, the profit motive pushes more companies to try new ideas and also shuts down experiments that are not working faster. This can come across as cold and unfeeling, but more efficiently allocates scarce resources across the sector.1
Recent News & Updates
December 22, 2022
While Celestial Growth is not the first venture capital firm to invest in the Canadian space sector, it is the first to be dedicated to such investments. The IPO of Celestial Acquisition Corp. indicates a desire to grow the fund into something large.
Related
💰 Funding & Associations
- Why The Chasm Predicts Space Belongs to Blue Collar Workers not Boffins or Bureaucrats
- Celestial Growth Corp - Investing venture capital into new space and space adjacent companies.
- Space Canada - Banding commercial companies together to propel the Canadian space sector to new heights.
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The purpose of this information is to educate Canadians and interested parties about the overall space sector, not provide investment advice. Investing with the tiny amounts of high-level information presented here would be reckless and irresponsible; if you're tempted just stop. ↩