Behind The Scenes Of A Mission To Touch The Sun: NASA's Parker Solar Probe Launch

Delta IV HEavy At Cape Canaveral

In early 2017, Founder Institute announced a new initiative, the STAR Fellowship. To inspire and empower entrepreneurs to build 500 new space-related businesses by 2025. We wanted to help cultivate "astropreneurship". We did this in partnership with some of the world’s foremost leaders in space, entrepreneurship, and innovation to simplify the complex process of launching a space startup.

Commander Michael López-Alegría - NASA Astronaut

During this time I became fortunate to meet with some of the amazing space industry experts, such as the New York Space Alliance. I even got to met my first Astronaut during the release of Sparks & Honey's report "Space: Exploration Innovation Brought Down To Earth". It was a pleasure to met former NASA Astronaut Commander Michael Lopez-Alegria, who holds the all time American record for number of Spacewalks (10) and total Spacewalk duration (67 hours and 40 minutes). 

So earlier this year when I heard NASA was scouting for social media influencers, I decided to apply for social media credentials. And then a few months later, to my surprise, I was selected by NASA to come down to Cape Canaveral for the launch of the Parker Solar Probe! 

The Parker Solar Probe is NASA's first ever mission to touch the sun. The Parker Solar Probe will use seven gravity assist Venus flybys over the next seven years to slowly shrink its orbit around the sun. This will bring the Parker Solar Probe as close as 3.83 million miles to the sun. On it's closest orbit, the probe will be seven times closer than any spacecraft before it and it's eventual speed will make it the fastest human-made object in existence, at 430,000 mph relative to the sun.

As NASA states; "The spacecraft will go close enough to the sun to watch the solar wind speed up from subsonic to supersonic, and it will fly through the birthplace of the highest-energy solar particles. Still, as with any great mission of discovery, Parker Solar Probe is likely to generate more questions than it answers."

At 3:48 a.m. EDT on Saturday, August 11, the Parker Solar Probe will launch to begin its journey to the sun atop the second most powerful rocket in operation: the Delta IV Heavy. Selected in 2015 for the mission, it was the biggest rocket on the planet before being eclipsed by Space X Falcon Heavy in February of this year. To learn more about the mission, the Parker Solar Probe, and NASA's launch this Saturday be sure to watch the video below detailing the Park Solar Probes journey to touch the sun. 

I will be sharing my experience behind the scenes at Cape Canaveral on social media for everyone to follow along. I will be tweeting, Instagramming, live streaming on Twitch, and more. The links are below. So be sure to follow my social media posts over the next few days to watch behind the scenes of one of NASA’s biggest launches in recent years! 

Why The Senate's Plan To Tax Employee Options At Vesting Is Bad For Startups

Startups are the envy of the world for how innovative and fast moving they can be. However, they often lack the amount of cash in the bank required to pay employees a salary that is competitive with the top tech companies such as Google, Facebook, Amazon, etc. To compensate for this, they give their employees an equity ownership in the company. Typically that equity vests monthly or quarterly over the span of four years. Here is a quick primer for anyone that wants to get brought up to speed on how "Startup Equity & Vesting" works. 

When an employee is given stock options, those options are illiquid. Meaning they can not be sold or transferred for money until the company has a liquidable event (e.g., an exit such as an acquisition or going public). So when employees receive options they usually have to wait years before being able to turn them into cash.

At this moment there are new Tax Reform plans proposed in both the House of Representatives and the Senate. The current proposal in the Senate plans to tax employee stock options at the moment of vesting, instead of when they are exercised, as is currently done.  The House of Representatives has already removed this provision from their proposal.

What is the tangible effect?  If passed, startup employees would be forced to pay taxes on these equity options, regardless of any realization of actual value.  

As Fred Wilson said, "Taxing equity compensation upon vesting makes no sense. If this provision becomes law, startup and growth tech companies will not be able to offer equity compensation to their employees. We will see equity compensation replaced with cash compensation and the ability to share in the wealth creation at your employer will be taken away."

Passing this law will make it extremely difficult for startups to compete with bigger corporations for high-quality talent. I am personally signing on to a letter addressed to Sen. Orrin Hatch, Chair of the Senate Finance Committee, to oppose the proposed new plan and ask that Section III(H)(1) be removed from the Senate bill. If you would like to speak up as well (with your local representative), you can find your senators here and your representative here, along with the phone number to their office. 

Protecting The United States International Entrepreneur Rule

Immigrant Entrepreneurs: Elon Musk, Arianna Huffington, Sergey Brin, Vinod Khosla, And Phil Libin 

After being officially passed in January, the "International Entrepreneur Rule" was set to take effect July 17th, 2017 in the United States. This week though, the new rule was delayed by the Department of Homeland Security. 

The International Entrepreneur Rule is a critical effort to ensure that the best and the brightest foreign-born entrepreneurs could more easily grow the companies that will create American jobs here in the U.S. while expanding our economy. The delay by the DHS is unquestionably a setback for the United States in the global race for talent. We should be encouraging innovators to bring their new ideas, expertise, and unique skills to our country, rather than incentivizing them to put their talents to work for our competitors abroad.

As the Managing Director of the Founder Institute in New York I can say from first-hand experience the proposed International Entrepreneur Rule would be a big step forward for America. Time after time I have watched as prospective international founders come to Founder Institute New York to start a high-growth tech-enabled company, only to be stopped from incorporating and progressing the new company by the limitations of current immigration laws.

With an estimated 3,000 international entrepreneurs expected to apply per year to start companies within the US, the impact of this reform will have an immediate positive impact as well as create a long-term attraction for global entrepreneurs to build their companies right here in America.

A reform to immigration such as the proposed International Entrepreneur Rule will undoubtedly increase the amount of technological innovation, job creation, and economic value in the United States of America.

Starting now, people can submit public comment on the Federal Register's site. I strongly encourage you to use it as an opportunity to send a strong message to the administration that people are paying attention and we are not happy about the decision to rescind the International Entrepreneur Rule.

I Just Voted. You Should Too.

I just voted and you should too.

I am not going to remind you to take action or that voting is the patriotic thing to do. 

I am just going to briefly stress to you of the importance of this election. I am going to ask you to take a step back from all the noise and distractions around this election. To find even three to five quiet minutes today to stop what your doing and think clearly about what you really want our country to be over the next four years and beyond. Use those quiet moments to find some clarity using both your heart and your brain. Not just one or the other. Apply empathy to your perspective. 

Take that clarity and go vote today for the people on your ballot who you truly believe will make this country a BETTER place for ALL 318.9 million citizens of the United States of America. 

Taking Action

September 27th is National Voter Registration Day in the United States. As such, I could list off a bunch of information about the current political landscape, the Electoral College, or democracy in general just to convince you that the system is worth your time. But I'm not going to do that. I'm not going to even talk about the candidates. I just want to talk about taking action.

Yes, all the systems, processes, and entities above could be stronger. But something being broken doesn't mean it is hopeless.

I watch entrepreneurs beat the odds day after day to improve and fix the broken systems, industries, and entities in the world. They do so using only the scarce tools and resources provided to them. So, why is that they can do what others can't? It's simple. It's because they take action. They take action instinctively, again and again, day after day, without hesitation. 

A handful of people who we call entrepreneurs take action and change the world over time. So imagine if everyone seized each day and took action without hesitation in their own lives. I am not going to ask you to register to vote. Nor am I here to tell you that need to vote on November 4th. Instead I am going to ask you to take action, in order to solve the problems in the world that you see. If there are tools at your disposal, don't squander opportunity and watch them waste away. Use the opportunities in your life to make the world better.  

In other news, here are some tools I happened to find on the cyber; I mean Internet:  

• TurboVote: Sign up to receive election reminders, get registered to vote, & apply for your absentee ballot.
• Vote.org: Everything you need to vote.
• VotePlz: Get ready to vote.
• And many more! 

See what I did there? 😉. Hope it helps! 

What Does Patriotism Mean

George Washington's Inauguration Site, Federal Hall, NYC

I think it is important to take time to reflect when life gives us the opportunity to do so. Over the July 4th weekend we celebrated the 240th anniversary of America's independence and I visited the inaugural location where George Washington was sworn in as the first President. If you want to visit too, it is located at the Federal Hall on Wall Street here in NYC. Just across from the New York Stock Exchange.

I was thinking about what does it mean to be an average American. What did it mean then and what does it mean 240 years later, today. There has been a lot of heated controversy in the media about this recently, due to the upcoming election.

Then my brother text me a youtube video of that I NEEDED to watch in honor of the weekend. The video is of John Cena explaining what Patriotism means in today's world. I watched it on my brothers recommendation and to my amazement thought the words leaving the WWE Champion's mouth were so perfect I would share it with you here. I promise to get back to startups in my next post, but for now watch what John Cena had to say below. You will be pleasantly surprised I think. 

Patriotism - devoted love, support, and defense of one's country.