From a Cold Email to a $2.3 Billion Startup: The Story of Relativity Space

Since Tim Ellis was a student, he was baffled and amazed by sci-fi movies, about what the future could look like. The story begins with Tim Ellis’ internship at Blue Origin working on 3D printing. He believed that it must be the center of attention, but it went the other direction, he was amazed by the disinterest of others; This also led him to meet the CEO, Jeff Bezos, to talk about this opportunity. Though the CEO agreed, it was not enough, so he decided to co-found a startup with one of his friends.

Co-founders

Tim Ellis (CEO — 22 years old) and Jordan Noon (ex-CTO — 26 years old) in Los Angeles, California founded a startup called Relativity Space. Tim worked at Blue Origin, an aerospace company, and the latter, Jordan Noon, worked at SpaceX, an aerospace company.

Vision:

Tim really believes that it shouldn’t just be a handful of companies that make landing on Mars possible but hundreds of hundreds of companies. And Relativity Space, a 3D printing company, would be the factory. The vision of the company is to “build the industrial base on Mars.”

It is said that “relativity space” will be the infrastructure for futuristic revolutions, just exactly as Apple was for Meta (formerly Facebook), the Internet for Amazon, etc. The point is, according to “Start with Why” " whoever figures the WHY out and keeps it could have a long-lasting company.

The CEO

Tim Ellis disagrees with traveling to Mars solely for billionaires, he believes everyone has the equal right to go to Mars. It seems, in contrast to Elon Musk, he is terribly excited about the experience humans could have on Mars, not just as a backup planet after Earth.

Seed investing round

The very first fundraising of Relativity Space, which has a cool story, is a simple cold email to Mark Cuban, investor and entrepreneur, with the subject of “Space is Sexy 3D Printing an Entire Rocket” and offering him to invest one-fifth of the total seed ($500K). Interestingly enough, the email was replied to, and he was eager to give half a million.

Thereafter, they dived into Y Combinator, an accelerator, with a cool pitch saying we don’t care because we are going to make it whether you accept us or not (see here)

They got investments from YC, BlackRock, and so on. According to Crunchbase the total investments up to now is $1.3 B.

Products

Terran 1

“In March 2023, we successfully launched Terran 1, the world’s largest 3D printed object, into space. This maiden voyage proved that 3D printed rockets are structurally viable – ushering in a new era of aerospace manufacturing” - relativityspace.com

Terran R

Government and commercial customers are looking to launch satellites quickly and inexpensively, without waiting for a ride-share slot on a large rocket launch to become available. We saw this market gap and set out to design a product to meet our customers’ needs; that’s where Terran R comes in. - Relativity Space - Terran R

Evolving from Terran 1 to Terran B jump from 85% to 95% 3D printed by mass.

Terran R rocket, which will compete with SpaceX’s Falcon 9

On top of above mentioned, Aeon 1, Aeon R, Aeon Vac are 3D-printed engines that are fed with liquid oxygen and liquid natural gas.

The 3D-Printer

The printer, Stargate, uses AI to create real-time quality control and inspection, making it possible to produce complex aerospace parts with unique geometries. The printer not only reduces the time to 60 days from 720 days but also reduces part counts by 100%. Basically, it produced 85% of Terran 1 and 95% of Terran R.

The development could be framed in 3 phases:

1. Before printing

   They use algorithms (I would say reinforcement learning (RL)) to simulate, and then print. The most important part of this simulation is a big thermal structural simulation where it ends up getting warping and distortion, at the end, after simulating they’d reverse it.

   
   

2. Printing

   It is stochastic and non-linear; during printing, they have different sensors, including cameras, laser, and so on, which are going to merge together, sensor fusion or perception layer. It helps to find flaws as they happen. They’d use AI to predict flaws in advance, and then eliminate them. Finally, a trade-off between new amendments, time, and other factors to iterate.

   
   

3. After printing

   Collecting big data, and feeding it to AI to better correlate for improvements. As these iterations are not as time-consuming as traditional methods, relativity space is able to advance its progress faster than others.

Is Relativity Space revolutionary?

According to Peter Thiel, co-founder of PayPal and SpaceX’s investor, there are 4 vital factors to having a great product, including Proprietary Technology, network effects, economies of scale, and branding.

Its product is 10X better than others, if not through its short process, then for the fact that it improves faster than others and can become 10X. Also, there is no other company that combines two enormous technologies, Rocket Manufacturing, and 3D-Printing, together. Even though this stack of two was criticized in the beginning by Sam Altman, the CEO and co-founder of OpenAI, while he was in YC.

On network effect, we can’t say anything as they are still developing with no commercial use. I’m excited for it…

On the third, scalability, they can hold a superior position compared to competitors. They have a built-in printer, which assisted them in dropping time from 2 years to only 60 days.

Lastly, branding, as it seems they have been quite successful but not as much as SpaceX. By far, we can say SpaceX with its charismatic CEO, has been one of the best-branded companies, inspiring millions of people worldwide. Even the CEO, Tim Ellis, mentioned that he’s inspired by SpaceX.

2 out of 4, not bad …. it says that she can have an extraordinary monopoly or become a big actor in the industry …

Differentiation

What sets them apart isn't just the cost but also their rocket-building approach. With 3D printing, they have the flexibility to make adjustments at any time, and the production cycle is significantly shorter. This means that by simply updating the software, they can introduce a variety of optimized versions within a year, a pace that surpasses traditional methods.

In the game of chess, there's a common belief that the starting move is crucial. However, the reality is quite the opposite. It's the player who makes the final move that truly matters. In the realm of business, we see this principle in action. Apple wasn't the first smartphone manufacturer, Google wasn't the pioneer in search engines, and Tesla wasn't the initial green company. Yet, they emerged as leaders in their respective fields. Tim Ellis, the CEO of Relativity Space, shares this perspective, emphasizing that his startup aims to be the last mover rather than the first in the aerospace industry.

Ambition:

They have plans to launch the first commercial mission to Mars in 2024, next year, basically.

Market Space:

The actors are SpaceX, Blue Origin, Virgin Galactic, United Launch Alliance (ULA), etc. The aforementioned companies are the most popular ones, as it seems the competition is constructive and healthy. For example, in 2021 Jeff Bezos, CEO & founder of Blue Origin, visited Relativity Space’s headquarters (source).

I am a machine learning engineer with interests in business and entrepreneurship, Feel free to contact me. I can be found via LinkedIn

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