Hacker News Reader

Comment by jasongullickson | Hacker News Reader

Elon Musk seems to be someone who really knows how to do cool things with the spoils of a successful software company. Are there any other good examples of people like this that have taken one big win and parlayed it into investing in seriously futuristic technology?

View on HN

It's interesting how common this is in New Space:

Jeff Bezos - From Amazon.com to Blue Origin

Richard Branson - From Virgin Records to Virgin Galactic

Robert Bigelow - From Budget Suites to Bigelow Aerospace

Elon Musk - From PayPal to SpaceX

I'm hoping that this is just the beginning of a trend of successful businesspeople investing in humanities' future in space.

Richard Branson is a good example of an "adventure capitalist".

Here is his Wikipedia profile:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Branson

Here is the Wikipedia page for his space tourism company:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virgin_Galactic

Also worthy of a mention is Mark Shuttleworth, who was the world's second space tourist (and also the founder of the Ubuntu Foundation):

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Shuttleworth

Perhaps the ur-example would be Howard Hughes. Got rich selling drill bits, plunged it all into much more interesting ventures like aeroplanes and motion pictures.

Don't forget Anousheh Ansari:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anousheh_Ansari

And Richard Garriot aka Lord British - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Garriott

Everyone on the list of space tourists has an interesting past:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_tourism#List_of_flown_spa...

Don't forget John Carmack - from Doom at Id softare to Armadillo Aerospace

Robert Bigelow:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Bigelow

His space station company:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bigelow_Aerospace

Reply on news.ycombinator.com