Muon Space Blueprints: Don’t Fear Big Change (Seriously, It Will Be Fine)

BuilderOps Blueprints is a newsletter on company building foundations for early-stage startups by Costanoa Ventures, a VC firm that backs builders across data, dev, and fintech. Throughout this series, Costanoa’s BuilderOps team interviews founders and startup leaders, showcasing their superpowers and learnings on all things company building.

For our latest edition of BuilderOps Blueprints, we interviewed Tracy Morgan, Vice President of Growth at Muon Space, which makes Earth intelligence accessible through space technology to help protect our people, climate, and ecosystems.. Muon successfully deployed its first ESPA-class satellite, MuSat-1, in 2023. The company followed it up just nine months later with the launch of MuSat-2, its second ESPA-class satellite, designed to gather new insights for Department of Defense weather programs. Check out open roles at Muon here.

The idea of space exploration continues to capture our collective imaginations. Tell us a little bit about Muon Space.

We recently celebrated our third anniversary! Muon Space is part of the new space revolution’s second wave: designing, building and operating larger satellites, ESPA and ESPA Grande, that allow us to put higher-grade scientific instruments into space for commercial and government clients and send more data back down to earth. 

And Muon approaches the mission a little differently than others in the industry do, right?

That’s right. One of the unique things about Muon is the way we look at the mission in its entirety. We always start by trying to understand the fundamental question: What are you trying to achieve by going into space? We do the entire mission formulation, design, build, test, launch and full operational support with this context in mind. It’s not enough to just get our customers into space. We want to make sure that their mission objectives are achieved at the end.

The space industry is notoriously difficult to break into – and like many companies, you’ve had some big shifts. What’s your take on that for earlier-stage companies?

In my first six months, I think we changed our go-to-market approach in a major way at least three times. Was that a lot? Maybe, but we’ve signed some really large deals and we’ve already grown the company 10x over the last year. That’s success! 

And it came because we were able to let go, to say, that’s not working or we need to iterate this messaging or offering. That’s often hard for people. It’s very common to want to hold onto an idea and see it through to its death because it’s a “good idea.” In actuality, you need to listen carefully for what prospective customers are valuing.

Many young companies have to demonstrate credibility as relative unknowns. Being one of the fastest companies to go from inception to orbit surely helped, but what were other things you did to establish yourselves?

A small company has to overcome client concerns like financial stability, your ability to scale fast, the prospect of success implementing something significantly larger than you’d ever done before. We’ve dealt with it all by being forthright. I see a lot of business development and sales people stumble by trying to ignore customer concerns or only partially addressing them, hoping they’ll disappear. You have to be responsive to concerns or they fester underneath.

What are some tactical ways to show you hear customer concerns?

Build relationships and help people get to know the talent and resources you’ll commit to them throughout the journey. Really listen and track each concern until you hear from them that you’ve overcome the issue. Sometimes it’s bringing in artifacts that offer proof of your competence. Sometimes it’s bringing others into the conversation. Our investors have played major roles in supporting us – they’ve worked with us on language for proposals and also been willing to meet directly with prospective clients. 

I would also say nailing the technical proposal is key. We always focus on addressing hot buttons in our technical solutions so that the “how” we will solve customer problems is clear, specific and compelling. We’ve gotten a fair amount of feedback that we’ve had the number-one technical response on a number of these proposals, which is wonderful, and we also try to offer a reasonable, middle-of-the road cost so it’s truly a fair and powerful offering.

Let’s turn to leadership. Would you share some perspective as a woman leader in a more traditionally male-dominated industry? 

The big thing is to say yes to opportunities. Sometimes we’re more apprehensive about taking on new roles or stretching ourselves to do something we haven’t done before. We want to make sure we’re fully ready. But the most important things by far are a willingness to learn and a passion for taking on that challenge and risk. Sometimes those opportunities don’t come around a second time. Tap into your network and ask for help, especially from other women who have done well. There is a community that will support you and your passion will help you achieve success.

You’re also passionate about STEM for girls and young women.

Yes, I am! I lead my girls’ Girl Scout Troop and at the beginning of the year, there was a lot of resistance to STEM. We were able to visit a company building satellites that’s local to me in Virginia and they really welcomed our girls. The girls were able to see them building satellites and walk through the whole design process. It was so eye-opening for them – they thought a technical career was just about software. And that experience really opened up their eyes to the many facets of STEM careers. Now some of them want to do design; others want to build. It was gratifying to see.

Let’s wrap up with one of our favorites: productivity hacks. Will you tell us one of yours?

I like to plan out my day every morning by looking at my calendar for that day and the rest of the week to see what major things I need to be prepared for. I take notes on the big items and then I prioritize down to the top three so I know if nothing else has been achieved, I will have crossed those off my list by the end of that day. It feels good.