Space Cicada Spotlight

Cicada Spotlight: Tim Parsons

Evelyn Homin
Evelyn Homin

As we look forward to welcoming the community to the National Space Industry Hub, we sat down with our newly appointed space expert-in-residence Tim Parsons.

“Space innovation is all about people”, Tim says. Our vision is that the National Space Industry Hub is a meeting place for all space innovators. With a physical location for researchers, entrepreneurs, and industry to collaborate, we hope to fertilise growth for Australia’s space economy. 

In our conversation below, Tim shares what sparked his interest in space, his advice for deep tech entrepreneurs and why he's excited about joining the hub. 

People think space is all about super-expensive, super-exotic technology. Actually, it's about people, systems engineering thinking, and collaboration... it's all space junk until it's flown to space and delivered some value here on Earth.

 

How are you currently involved in Australia’s space industry?

You'll know I’m a space tragic after you read this!

 

What sparked your interest in space?

I was always mad keen on TV shows like Thunderbirds, Dr Who, Space 1999, and of course seeing Star Wars in 1978 blew my child’s mind. Then in 1982, I met Apollo 16 lunar module pilot and Apollo 13 Capcom Charlie Duke, who blew my teenage mind, and that was that.

 

What excites you about becoming the National Space Industry Hub as the expert in residence?

The National Industry Space Hub is the culmination of a dream we first started talking about in 2014. A place for space in NSW, where talent, technology, capital, and can-do reach a critical mass!
 

 

What are the most common misconceptions about space innovation?  

That it's all about super-expensive, super-exotic technology.

Actually, it's about people, systems engineering thinking, and collaboration. Microelectronics means that most space tech has gotten 10-100x smaller and cheaper over the past few years. Sure there’s some cool high-tech in there too, but it's all space junk until it's flown to space and delivered some value here on Earth or in space.

 

What advice do you have for budding space and deep tech entrepreneurs? 

  1. Partners Are The Primary Route to Market

    Unless they’re doing downstream data services, customer discovery is incredibly hard for deep tech companies…partnerships are much more important - and crucial to their success, and acquisition by a partner is 99.9% of their most likely pathway to exit. All the successful deep tech companies I’ve ever coached or worked with went looking for partners, and openly asked ‘how might we do something together?', ‘what do we need to do to prepare for them?’, and ‘how can we uncover new markets using shared assets and infrastructure?'.

  2. Deep Tech Founders Are Rarely Business Development People

    They are more often engineers & scientists... so even (1) above - especially at an early stage - is very, very hard for them. They often literally don’t see the point of picking up the phone and building a relationship. They need smart, empathic, tech-savvy mentors to help them identify this gap in their skillset and mindset, and help them find the co-founder and/or BDM capabilities they need. That is if they can’t learn to learn about things out of their comfort zone.

  3. Tech Readiness Levels Are a Proxy for Value

    Space Tech / Deep Tech founders and wanna-be investors need to pay close attention to how things get done in Biotech, where you can’t even sell a product until you’ve got FDA/TGA approval. In fact, more sophisticated investors and industry partners totally benchmark based on efficacy measures and partner commentary. Upstream space is virtually the same: you won’t sell until you have Tech Readiness Level 9 (demonstrated in flight, in space). Startups and scaleups in space and deep-tech are climbing a ladder of Tech Readiness and Investor Readiness, and that goes back to my point first point (above): they need partners to climb that ladder.

 

What are you currently reading, watching or listening to that you would recommend to our community?

There’s so much going on! Here’s some stuff from the last 24 hours...

  1. Cloudstreet AI - Flood tracking from space for insurance, some great, high-impact uses of space here 

  2. e2mc – some new pals who’ve decided to go all-in to space investing

  3. This brilliant post about AgTech from Sarah & Matt @ AgThentic / Tenacious Ventures maps perfectly to the challenge of bringing SaaS-style coaching and mentoring to deep tech, so many great parallel learnings here

  4. Southern Launch and TiSpace – first commercial sub-orbital launch for Australia coming soon!


Learn more about the National Space Hub visit the website.