Startup Trek: Blue Origin vets go to the frontiers of space and tech with new studio
Two former employees of Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin space company are striking out on their own with Actuate Ventures, a venture studio that specializes in supporting startups in the space industry and other deep-tech markets.
Actuate’s founding partners, Chris Le and Andrew Woodfield, set up shop less than a year ago — but the studio is already building up connections with collaborators, investors and entrepreneurs. This week, they’re participating in events at SF Tech Week, and they’re also in the midst of a campaign to create their first $25 million venture fund for investment.
Le said it’s not just about the money. “We think of ourselves as ‘co-founders in a box,'” he told GeekWire. “The venture studio model in particular is a hybrid. It’s like if an incubator and a VC had a baby. We’re here to be in it with you and help grow your company, and not just be a check in the door.”
The venture studio approach isn’t a new idea: In the Seattle area, Madrona Venture Labs, Pioneer Square Labs, and others have followed a similar model successfully for years. But Le, Woodfield and the rest of the Actuate Ventures team aim to capitalize on their expertise in space ventures and associated tech frontiers, ranging from biomedicine to materials science.
“It’s having the entire ecosystem, where you go, ‘Hey, I need specialized 3D printing, or I need radiation testing, or I need very deep space domain services that you’re not going to get from your typical mentor group,'” Le said. “Andrew and I are very focused on deep tech and space tech. How do we drive companies toward producing solutions for, as Blue Origin would put it, the benefit of Earth and the people of Earth? Our mission is for the advancement of humanity.”
Before their time at Blue Origin, Le and Woodfield focused on designing and developing products as well as creating user experiences — and that’s basically the role they played at Blue Origin as well. Now they’re building on that experience, plus space savvy, to get Actuate Ventures off the ground.
It all began with a product studio called Exsai Technologies, which is now considered an Actuate Ventures company. Le said that Woodfield “had been cooking up this product studio concept for a while, and I had previous founder experience, having gone through and founded three previous startups in different industries.”
Exsai is a product services firm that helps clients build websites, draw up go-to-market strategies and do the other things startups need to do. “It provides a strong de-risking model and service to the portfolio companies that we plan to invest or have invested in,” Le said.
But that’s just the start. “We have multiple avenues of revenue,” Le said. Once the venture fund is set up, Actuate will invest in space startups and other deep-tech ventures — including ventures that are created within its startup studio. In the meantime, the company is providing services that help startups connect with outside investors.
Such services are already being provided to at least two ventures: Orbital Composites, which is working on 3D printing technologies suited for aerospace and energy applications as well as the space environment; and Ultraview AI, which is developing an AI-based platform for drone inspections. (Check out this fact sheet for further details about Actuate’s arrangement with Orbital Composites and Mach 33 Financial Group.)
Actuate is also aiming to set up innovation hubs in three of America’s leading aerospace centers: Redmond, Wash.; Orlando, Fla.; and Denver. Those hubs are where the company’s incubator and accelerator programs will be offered. Le said “we have placed a CEO into that as a subsidiary to build that out,” but added that it was too early to identify the CEO.
The company is a remote-first operation, with about 15 people on the team, Le said. Technically, it’s based in Orlando, which is Woodfield’s home territory. There’s also a community advisory network known as the Future Council. “That’s our team of experts where we say, ‘Hey, I have a question about psychology, or I have a question about fusion, et cetera,’ and then we tap them on the shoulder,” Le said. “That ecosystem is growing.”
Le said Actuate is building up momentum, but he also acknowledged that it hasn’t yet reached a stable orbit.
“We are mostly bootstrapping the operation, but we do have the product studio arm, which does the more standard, traditional work that you would expect from an agency model. That helps us keep operational,” he said. “This is our first full year of operation, so we are ramping up. This is not our first foray into building companies. We know that there’s going to be a nice, steady ramp-up, and then suddenly things will likely take off as we put all the pieces in place.”
For more about Actuate Ventures and the firm’s founders, check out the “Let’s Actuate” podcast on YouTube, Spotify and other podcast channels.