Webinar: Insights from Elon Musk’s Starlink Success

5 Practical Ways VCs Are Investing in the Race to Monetize Space

Matt Caspari is Managing Partner of Alumni Ventures’ Deep Tech Fund. Matt is a two-time founder/CEO with a decade of startup operating experience. Prior to joining AV, Matt was a leader of the innovation team at Nike where he oversaw a portfolio of projects and led global cross-functional teams. While at UC Berkeley, Matt founded Aurora Biofuels, which grew to over 100 employees and raised more than $100m in capital before being acquired by Reliance Industries. Matt holds an MBA with a Certificate in Entrepreneurship from UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business and a BS in Biochemistry from Georgetown University.

In this webinar, Alumni Centures Managing Partner Matt Caspari hosted a conversation with Craig Moffett—a top analyst in the U.S. telecom, cable, and satellite sectors—to discuss the success of Elon Musk’s Starlink project and its implications for the venture capital landscape.

Starlink, a constellation of low Earth orbit (LEO) satellites, aims to provide broadband connectivity to unserved areas globally. While the project has attracted significant capital, Moffett expressed skepticism about its financial viability due to high costs associated with satellite production, launch, and replacement. He also highlighted the regulatory and geopolitical risks associated with satellite communications. Despite these challenges, Moffett noted that Starlink could create ancillary industries and investment opportunities, such as local distribution and retail servicing.

Watch an on-demand recording below, or you can read a full transcript.

About Craig Moffett

Craig Moffett is Senior Managing Director of MoffettNathanson Research, considered the standard-bearer for Media and Communications research. Craig has covered the telecommunications industry — first as a management consultant and later as a Wall Street analyst — for more than thirty years. He has been elected to Institutional Investor Magazine’s All-American Research Team in the U.S. Telecom and/or Cable & Satellite sectors on seventeen separate occasions, including nine separate appearances as the #1 analyst in America in either U.S. Telecom and/or Cable & Satellite. Craig has appeared on various media outlets contributing his expert perspective on outlets such as Bloomberg, CNBC, and C-SPAN.

Alumni Ventures offers accredited individuals access to professional-grade venture capital, a key asset class missing from the portfolios of many sophisticated investors. Since 2014, AV has raised $1.3+ billion from 10,000+ investors and backed 1,300+ unique portfolio companies. AV is a top 20 venture firm in North America according to CB Insights, as well as the #1 most active venture firm in the U.S., and #3 most active in the world, according to PitchBook’s 2022 and 2023 rankings. AV has won awards from Inc. Magazine, Fast Company, Benzinga, and the US FinTech Awards.