The Original Rocket Man

By definition, entrepreneurs take risks that others won’t.

They hire, build technology, and sell today, with the hope that fortune will attend their future. It usually starts with long odds, and years of work to chip away at the probability of failure.

After your first success, you earn the freedom to take larger swings.

Musk worked on PayPal before Tesla and SpaceX.

DiCaprio made ‘What’s Eating Gilbert Grape?’ before ‘Titanic’ and ‘Inception’.

Melanie Perkins built Fusion Books before Canva made her a billionaire.

But those bigger swings still carry the risk of failure. Andy Beal learned this at the cost of $200 million.

Beal became a billionaire after founding a bank. For his second act, he targeted private space exploration. He saw legislation that was targeting the privatization of functions that had previously been NASA’s responsibility.

He founded Beal Aerospace in 1997 and spent hundreds of millions of dollars testing rockets and seeking government contracts.

Ultimately, he failed in just 4 years. But, his company was studied by the founders of SpaceX and Blue Origin in their pursuit of the stars.

Learn more about how Beal laid the groundwork for today’s rocket men, Bezos and Musk, in this video.

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