Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and Youtube.
If you like this episode, feel free to 💬,❤️ or 🔄 on Substack and your preferred podcast app so more people can find it!
Many companies set out to do something hard, Firefly Aerospace set out to do the impossible.
After 10 years and several existential moments, in 2025, Firefly became the first commercial company in human history to successfully land on the moon. Before Firefly, only countries had landed on the moon (for context, the Apollo program consumed roughly 4% of US GDP).
Following the landing, Firefly went public on the Nasdaq in the largest Aerospace & Defence IPO in history, with a valuation of roughly $8.5 billion.
Eric Salwan, one of the founders of Firefly, joined the show to discuss the Firefly journey, The New Space Race, and his own view on the power of pursuing the impossible.
The Firefly journey was part of Eric’s spiritual path. Firefly launched in 2014, ran out of money in 2016, and shut down. Eric had invested his own money, brought in family and friends as investors, and had to lay off the entire team. On New Year’s Day 2017, with no company and no clear path forward, he made the decision he was not leaving until someone physically removed him from the building. Firefly Aerospace relaunched May 1st, 2017 with 20 employees.
There is a power to relentlessly sharing the vision, even with people who have no way to help you. When Firefly needed capital at its most desperate moment, two of Eric’s friends went to their networks and raised $170 million of a $175 million round. None of those investors knew Eric personally, but they trusted the people who made the introduction.
People underestimate the personal cost of being a founder. Eric didn’t take a real vacation for nearly eight years. Firefly shut down once, had a rocket explode on the launch pad, watched tens of millions of dollars of work burn in a field during a test fire, and had to lay off 160 people who trusted the leadership to find a way. The Firefly story is an incredible one from the outside, but the lived experience was not always glamorous.
We are in the very early innings of the new space race and the stakes are high. Eric walked through the key players and the orbital markets being created, and how competition between the US and China continues to grow. His frame: when the first ships landed in America, nobody could have predicted what would be built there 250 years later. Space is the next frontier.
Resources
Eric Salwan on LinkedIn (best way to follow updates on the upcoming Firefly documentary)
Full List of Topics Covered
Eric’s background and how he came to co-found Firefly Aerospace
The original founding of Firefly in 2014, the shutdown in 2016, and the decision to restart
The capital requirements of building a rocket company
NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services program and how government contracts seeded the commercial space economy
The personal toll of the founder journey, including layoffs, rockets exploding, and years without a real vacation
How Firefly became the first commercial company in history to successfully land on the moon
What the lunar landing felt like in the room when it happened
How to think about the new space race and the roles of SpaceX, Rocket Lab, Firefly and others
Big power competition and the militarization of cislunar space between the US and China
Lessons Eric would share with students and young entrepreneurs
The Firefly documentary coming to Amazon Prime
I hope you enjoy the conversation. Feel free to share and let me know what resonates with you in the comments.
– Adam
No posts
Comments
Nothing yet. Say the first thing.
Sign in to join the conversation.