Keep pulling the thread on Christian Garrett.
The average time a technology company stays private has increased from 3-4 years in the 2000s to over 12 years today.
SpaceX has only raised $10 billion in primary capital over its 23-year history, making it a very capital-efficient business compared to peers like Uber.
SpaceX has been cash-flow positive for most of its history because its core launch business operated with negative working capital.
SpaceX runs tender offers every six months, partly as a structural necessity to provide employees with liquidity to cover tax bills on their single-trigger RSUs.
Recent large tender offers at Databricks and Stripe were conducted to cover employee tax liabilities after their double-trigger RSUs hit a seven-year cliff and converted to single-trigger status.
By remaining private, SpaceX was able to make long-term investments in R&D for Starlink and Starship without facing scrutiny from public market investors.
Christian Garrett believes the defense tech sector is currently overrated by venture investors.
The defense tech market will likely be a "winner-take-most" dynamic where value accrues to a small number of companies, unlike the broader enterprise software market.
The 2012 JOBS Act was a key policy accelerant for companies staying private longer by increasing the shareholder limit from 500 to 2,000.
The Durbin Amendment in the Dodd-Frank Act was a core piece of legislation that enabled the creation of the modern FinTech industry.
Palantir's litigation related to U.S. Code Title 10, Section 2377 forced the government to consider commercial alternatives, opening the defense market for new entrants like Anduril.
The Replicator Initiative, led by former Undersecretary of Defense Kathleen Hicks, was a Department of Defense effort to accelerate procurement of autonomous unmanned systems from the tech sector.