John Gedmark
Co-Founder and CEO, Astranis. On 2 shows, 4 appearances. The Shows tab opens the full record on each.
founderexecutiveengineer@Gedmark ↗LinkedIn ↗astranis.com ↗
He is the co-founder and CEO of Astranis, which develops small geostationary telecommunications satellites to provide broadband internet access worldwide. Previously, he served as the founding Executive Director of the Commercial Spaceflight Federation.
2shows
4appearances
49statements
19resolved
11supported
2contradicted
58%fully supported
Everything John Gedmark said on any show that made the record, most notable first. Each card names its show and opens the statement there.
Gedmark: First nation to reach lunar south pole ice will own it
“And whoever gets there first and really decides we're going to actually We're not just going to plant a flag. We're going to apply. We're going to put down a fence base and we're going to say this is our lunar property. Like whoever does at first they there's,…”
Gedmark: Single GEO satellites offer cheaper national broadband than LEO constellations
“Once you're up, any asset you can get up in that high orbit is just becomes this incredibly valuable thing because you can park it over a country, Or part of the world and provide, you know, a service with just that one satellite. So it ends up being this like…”
Gedmark: US will win if space becomes a contested domain
“And that is why I am I think very confident to say that if space is a contested domain, that we will win.”
Gedmark: Silicon Valley ensures US victory in the commercial space race
“No, no, absolutely. That is what the United States has that will, even though these other countries are doing a better job of figuring out what to do with their government investment in space and how they're spending those dollars, the United States has Silico…”
Astranis's Taiwan satellite will provide backup if undersea cables are cut
“It will actually have a couple of different, you know, it will be able to provide service on the island, but it will also be able to be a relay to locations off the island in the case that all their fiber lines are cut.”
Gedmark: Global fiber optic infrastructure has essentially reached its maximum physical reach
“I think we have essentially reached the people we're going to reach with fiber.”
Gedmark: Space industry is the only viable solution for global connectivity
“It is on us in the space industry to solve this problem. I do not see any other means solving it.”
Astranis secured a U.S. Space Force contract in six weeks
“So I'm very proud to say that visit was extremely fruitful, and we are now on a new contract that General Gutlein was able to put in place in just six weeks from when he visited and we are off and rolling on that.”
Gedmark: China will never match US venture-backed space innovation
“And I think that is something That the Chinese will never be able to match, so we should be very proud of that, and we should make use of it.”
Astranis CEO discloses $100M+ commercial satellite deal with Taiwan's Chunghwa Telecom
“It is a longer, longer sales cycle for, you know, a hundred million dollar plus deal, but obviously worth the effort. This is so this is a commercial contract with a telco called Chungwa Telecom.”
Gedmark: Astranis will likely use orbital transfer vehicles with Starship
“Well, it'll, it will I believe it is, is heavily Leo optimized. So using it, we will most likely, it's not strictly necessary. We don't have to do this, but we will most likely want to use one of these orbital transfer vehicles.”
Gedmark: Telecoms demand dedicated, SLA-backed satellite capacity over shared networks
“What they are really looking for is dedicated capacity. That is set aside for their exclusive use. And it's on these what we call SLA service level agreements. You know, guaranteed uptimes where they, and they know it's there, whether they are using it or not.…”
Gedmark: Astranis caps satellite customization to a few modular components
“So we have a standard satellite design. We have a few pieces to it that are essentially modular. So you can sort of plug and play a few different things like Lego blocks for slightly different customer configurations. But that's it, right? We draw the line the…”
Gedmark: Astranis has early NASA study contract for lunar communications
“We actually, yes, we have an early NASA study contract. We're studying that for NASA.”
Gedmark: China has zero division between military, civil, and commercial space
“There's, they have no, you know, not only do they have coordination, I mean, there's just no divisions at all between their military space, civil space, and even their commercial space. It's all just one big industry Blob of activity that's, you know, we can't…”
Gedmark: Space Shuttle era cost-plus contracts entrenched legacy defense contractors
“Then we entered into this era in the eighties, basically with the space shuttle, things got very entrenched with these cost plus contracts. And the major aerospace defense contractors were basically able to lock in, you know, these programs at a cost of billio…”
Gedmark: Commercial space emerged from dot-com wealth and Space Shuttle retirement
“So you really had all these ingredients of basically private individuals who had made enough money in the dot-com boom and had this passion for space to go and take a run at it. On the government side, you had the retirement of the special Coming up on the hor…”
Gedmark: GEO orbit historically received the bulk of satellite capital
“Historically, GEO is actually the most valuable orbit. That is where the bulk of money has been spent to put satellites into orbit.”
Gedmark: Off-the-shelf space hardware failed GEO specs, forcing custom components
“A lot of the components that you could buy were really designed for LEO satellites. And once we dug into it, would just not work for us in GEO, you know, and that's, you know, that's not through any fault of the of the vendors. It was just designed for a diffe…”
Gedmark: Internet bandwidth demand is effectively unlimited at low enough prices
“On the other end of the spectrum, if you put it up at a low enough price, then the demand becomes almost effectively unlimited. I mean, people will, at a low enough price point, people will consume all the internet bandwidth that is available and then, you kno…”
Gedmark: The global population without internet access has increased to four billion
“People used to talk about the other three billion that don't have access to the internet. When, you know, the internet was first really taking off. Now it's the other four billion. The problem actually got worse.”
Gedmark: Successful space startups inevitably attract US national security interest
“A company doing new technology for space for aerospace, you know, there's by almost by definition, there are national security implications of what we do. So there is almost always you know, I think if you're doing things right, there's almost always going to …”
Gedmark: Geostationary satellites failed to adopt smaller, rapidly iterable hardware
“In some ways satellite technology is just one of these last, especially in geo, it's just one of these last places where, We did not move to smaller hardware that you could build faster and iterate on more quickly and do a faster refresh of technology, right?”
Gedmark: Traditional satellites keep getting bigger instead of shrinking over time
“If anything, they've gotten bigger and bigger over time instead of smaller and smaller. They somehow, you know, got, found themselves in this, you know, part of the design space where they got, they fell into this, you know, local optima. Descending down this …”
One line per show, most statements first. The link opens John's full record on that show: the calibration, argument clarity, speaking style and every statement made there.
| Show | Role there | Eps | Statements | Record | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 a16zLEDGER | Co-Founder and CEO, Astranis | 3 | 36 | 43% 6/14 | full record on the a16z Podcast → |
 TBPNLEDGER | Co-Founder and CEO, Astranis | 1 | 13 | 100% 5/5 | full record on TBPN → |