Email – plans for an open-source space elevator program.
one of many interesting conversations ive been having lately… we sent out our ‘distress signal’ and it amazes me the sorts of people that are responding. thank you – all of you. without our core od supporters and ‘cheerleaders’ we would be sunk. with your effort and commitment, i am certain we can pull out of this hole, and in fact this might be the break-through we have needed all along. let’s keep building this thing, and see where it leads. if we are very lucky, and very skilled, it just might lead us to space.
i’ve had a lot of introspective time lately. and i have had an epiphany. it will take me a while to write it up, but it nails the aspects where i’ve failed, and points toward a path (likely) success. it is conversations like the one below, that make that insight possible. as usual, the first part is my blanket response, and then my comments are intermized. thiers are blocked.
(snip),
my thoughts exactly. you dont know this about me, but i have a pretty strong finance background. when you get a moment, i’d like to talk with you about ‘capital paths’ and the space advocacy community. i think there is some real linkage there. i have been thinking about this for a couple years now. the space community cannot use the traditional angel/vc path, because the risk is too high. it needs to be spread much further, to a lot more people… this might just be the exact tool needed. wanna brainstorm about how to take the next step?
i will be posting some more stuff today, about what happened yesterday, and the plan for today. its gonna be rough. the bank representative shows up. this wont be easy…
(snip),
thanks for helping to get the ‘conversation‘ started. i spent 3 hours with my webguy yesterday. his head is spinning, as we completely scrap our current site, and figure out how to build the next version. its one thing to ‘talk’ about the changes to our site, and our company philospohy, but its something else to actually build a next-gen site that incorporates the new technologies. i mean, really, how do you build a single website where the front page has to describe what: a space elevator is, our role in it, and show off the colaboarive tools – wiki, grazr, blogs, flickr, twitter and do all this with style and grace of a ‘corperate image’ website. we looked all over the net, and cant find a single example of this. none. no where. so, amoung our effort to build and pioneer the construction of an elevator to space, we have just added the challenge of coming up with a new way to build a website… 
on top of that, its finals and final papers week for my guys, (full time students at the university of puget sound) so they are ‘stuck’ for a couple days, right when all this is coming together. so i have a lot less support than normal.
more comments below, thanks guys!
On May 1, 2007, at 8:18 AM, (snip) wrote:
Okay… I’ve been going full throttle about 6 hours straight… going for a walk now… back in an hour..
yup, up and working at 6am… will head to the gym before the bank guy shows up. otherwise the stress and anger and frustration will make my head and heart explode… that wont be pretty.
-critt
On 5/1/07, (snip) wrote:
Critt: Michael is the real deal for exercising the power of mass collaboration. Inspiring story – let’s help him build his dream while we stimulate and help him orchestrate the growing conversation.
thanks. right now, my wish list is pretty long. will publish it this week – specific goals and targets that i wont be able to achieve by myself. my team is pretty loyal, but they were also caught off-guard by this problem, and so they are scrambling to stay afloat, too. its not been an easy 2 weeks. once that wish-list is posted, that will help your network actually ‘do something useful’. i am still trying to get my head around the problem, but once i do, it will take some herculean action – right away.
It is truly energizing to be present at the birth – midwiffery is a remarkably positive experience.
yes it is. read my newest post (will be up in an hour) about what’s going on. i think that this baby of ours will live a grand and glorious life, but the labor pains are pretty rough these days. and maybe its a bit of a ‘premie’ and so it will need some intensive care in the beginning. but what we are build will change the world, and that is not an exaggeration. so, whatever effort we put into this, it is worth it.
Trying to get my head around how we can stay at the meta-meta level of these “launches” of conversationbase as they take off. While Michael is trying to launch the Space Elevator, we are literally hosting multiple launches. I need to get a Powers of Ten view of what we are doing fast – probably from the Space Elevator.
For Michael: As an old VC, I am struck by the possibility…
(snipped. sorry, but there is some pretty meaty stuff here. i cant disclose it, but youve got to trust me when i say you would be interested, if i were able to post the full text. there are actually some important sections of this message snipped. sorry to be so vague, but if i want these sorts of conversations to continue, i have to respect the privacy of the people i am chatting with. i hope you understand i am trying to as open as possible, without violating the trust of the other people invovled in these discussions.)
right. i did some investigation into the credit union business. i know of a small CU that has 89,000 members. they have over $500,000,000 in assets… now, consider the space advocasy community – 200,000 registered members in the US alone. add to that the employees of nasa, boeing, lockmart (and related aerospace) – that number easily stretches to 5M people. add to that, the contractors base that is required to support that industry… i am guessing at 25M that might actually care about space access, and might be able to fund a portion of it – if – they didnt have to take too big an -individual- risk. i have lots of ideas, and research surrounding this topic. let’s chat. but yes, it could potentially be very powerful. and that is just my little industry… what about the budding robotics industry, or the enormous nanotech field? what if you add in the science-fiction fan base?
For Critt: again a case of “eating our own dog food” – Let’s open and share with the private equity world the launch case of ConversationBase – are we brave enough to do it? If Michael is going full throttle inthis direction, let’s take our own ride. I will gather the linkages to the private equity (angel) investors from (snip) who is fully plugged in to that market. And it just occurs to me that (snip) is also in the business of helping angel groups form and become more effective in their investing process.
i want to be a part of that conversation. i think i have something useful to add to it. i dont have any capital to add to this, but ive got brainpower and contacts, and a really big mouth, so i can market whatever the result is. to build my elevator, i have long known we needed a finance vehicle – insurance, member credit union, angel network, credit facility, access to investment banking, vc’s and mergers and acquisition specialists/brokers. it might even make sense to develop a real estate arm. now, none of this stuff is gonna happen overnight, but all of this will be needed in the long run. i am not trying to build all of this at once, but the application of a wikified approach to this problem was part of the eureka moment when i discovered the book.
i’ve also looked at the idea of a ‘direct public offering’ as a further way to reduce risk, and distribute it further. a wikified approach to a DPO is an interesting idea…
see, that is the key problem in this industry. the risk/reward profile is simply too high. billionaires not withstanding, (allen, bezos, musk, carmack, branson) if there were a way to distribute risk amoung many people, so that individually, no one person or company or angel network were significantly at risk, then more capital could flow toward these projects. the other problem with this industry is that its ‘rocket science’ so everyone assumes it must be very complex. it is, but so are health systems, and computer systems, and they get funded all the time. so, if a conversation could get started that accomplished 2 things: 1) distributed risk, 2) educated about the risk/reward/technology/business, then everything in this industry could transform. and if that happens, we can get about the work of fixing our energy/environmental crisis’s.
(BIG snip, a couple paragraphs. but that is o.k., you were getting tired of my long posts, anyway, right?)
let me know what i can do to help.
my cell is (snip)
it is 9am now. will be heading to the gym, then the bank comes, so will be busy for about 4 hours. will be online the rest of the day and night, after that.
take care, and thanks for your interest. i am will blog big parts of this message, but will edit out the kernal of the finance idea, as i dont want to tip that off, just yet.
and thanks for your support. i really appreciate it.
mjl
1st Message______
On 5/1/07, (snip) wrote:
Like I said earlier, the first hat I put on today was my Editorial Board hat at (snip) wiki. This is what I found:
http://www.socialtext.net/wikinomics/index.cgi?the_new_world_of_wikinomics
Which resulted in a flurry of activity ending with:
http://www.socialtext.net/conversationbase-liftport
Michael and I had a firehose conversation yesterday… gotta get him blogging regularly, wiki-ing (is that a word yet?), and start building Grazr Widgets. (I’ve already alerted Adam with a private label request.)
Okay… nose back to grindstone…
Thanks,
-critt
–
Michael J. Laine
President
LiftPort Group
245 4th Street
Suite 508
Bremerton WA, 98337
360-377-0623
www.liftport.com
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