Every quarter, Lux Capital, a leading venture capital firm known for investing in hard science and deep tech startups, publishes their investor letter offering a unique opportunity to gain insight into the firm's investment thesis and strategy. The firm has been an early supporter of the space industry with early bets in companies like Relativity Space, Epsilon3, Impulse Space, Astranis, Kymeta, Varda, Planet, and Hadrian.
This week’s Pathfinder features a deep dive on the firm’s latest Q3 letter with General Partner Shahin Farshchi. In addition to Shahin’s own background, the conversation covers:
And much more…
Lux's Q3 Investor Letter: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1s5xiwjG9psi6xRQPsAcI-I7-g6k5Pe--/view
This episode is brought to you by SpiderOak, a US-based software company that builds space cybersecurity products and solutions for civilian, military, and commercial space operations. Learn more at https://spideroak.com/
• Chapters •
00:00 - Guest Intro & SpiderOak Ad
01:18 - The Lux 8 fundraise
02:33 - Shahin's background
06:38 - How was Lux started
10:10 - The firm’s structure
11:48 - A&D over the next decade
15:30 - Investment highlights
17:35 - Geopolitical shifts
19:57 - A look at American Dynamism
23:41 - Do you need to be a scientist to be a deep tech investor?
27:03 - A thesis-driven strategy
33:05 - Advice for emerging managers
39:11 - The role of media
42:33 - Starship launch predictions
43:17 - The second most valuable space company
• Show notes •
Lux's website — https://www.luxcapital.com/
Lux's socials — https://twitter.com/Lux_Capital
Shahin's socials — https://twitter.com/Farshchi
Mo's socials — https://twitter.com/itsmoislam
Payload’s socials — https://twitter.com/payloadspace / https://www.linkedin.com/company/payloadspace
Pathfinder archive — Watch: https://www.youtube.com/@payloadspace Pathfinder archive — Listen: https://pod.payloadspace.com/episodes
• About us •
Pathfinder is brought to you by Payload, a modern space media brand built from the ground up for a new age of space exploration and commercialization. We deliver need-to-know news and insights daily to 15,000+ commercial, civil, and military space leaders. Payload is read by decision-makers at every leading new space company, along with c-suite leaders at all of the aerospace & defense primes. We’re also read on Capitol Hill, in the Pentagon, and at space agencies around the world. Payload began as a weekly email sent to a few friends and coworkers.
Today, we’re a team distributed across four time zones and two continents, publishing three media properties across multiple platforms: 1) Payload, our flagship daily newsletter, sends M-F @ 9am Eastern (https://newsletter.payloadspace.com/) 2) Pathfinder publishes weekly on Tuesday mornings (pod.payloadspace.com) 3) Polaris, our weekly policy publication, hits inboxes Tuesday (https://polaris.payloadspace.com/) 4) Parallax, our weekly space science briefing, hits inboxes Thursday (https://parallax.payloadspace.com/)
