i ve read about you is that you went from dishwasher by day to explosives by night. peter, i mean, how did you go from a dishwasher engineer to literally reaching for space and developing one of the world s most successful space companies? i d always had a passion forspace, eversince i was very, very young, and a passion for engineering. and you combine those two things and then you get rocket lab. and i started my career out as a tool and die maker, an apprentice at a company called fisher and paykel that, as you correctly point out, built dishwashers and then into the design office, then into a government research institute where we did a lot with smart materials, mainly carbon composites, and then really went on a rocket pilgrimage to the united states, decided that what was happening wasn t what i thought was needed to happen and came back to new zealand and started rocket lab. but, peter, you also started without the considerable wealth of your billionaire rivals, like elon mu
some of your shares, they re publicly traded. i m just wondering, just does the need to give shareholders a financial return limit what you can achieve? because, let s be frank, i mean, this is a business not without a lot of risk. no, absolutely, no, i think it s the opposite. i think it drives good business decisions and good engineering decisions, because if you have no accountability, then you can be very fast and loose with your decisions and your spending. and we ve seen that across the industry and the resulting outcomes. so, no, i think it brings a level of rigour and discipline to a business that s very healthy. and, look, make no mistake i m trying to build a multi generational space company that will live on long, long, long after i m gone. and you do that. one of the reasons, in fact, we went public is to enforce that. as we know, india sjust
business plans and raise venture capital to fund innovative new ideas, innovative new approaches and business models, leveraging small satellite platforms. the us investment bank morgan stanley, it s forecasting the space economy. it says it s going to triple in size to reach $1 trillion by 2040. i m just wondering, what areas of space activity are likely to be the most profitable, in your view? 90% of all activity falls within the satellites industry, and that s the gps geospatial intelligence satellite communications stacks. and within that, you ve got layers infrastructure, distribution and applications. and these companies are growing incredibly fast and they re focused on the world s largest industries, like agriculture, insurance, maritime, logistics. regrow is a company that s focused on data fusion, leveraging information from satellites, as well as ground sensors, to enable precision farming.
and you combine those two things and then you get rocket lab. and i started my career out as a tool and die maker, an apprentice at a company called fisher and paykel that, as you correctly point out, built dishwashers and then into the design office, then into a government research institute where we did a lot with smart materials, mainly carbon composites, and then really went on a rocket pilgrimage to the united states, decided that what was happening wasn t what i thought was needed to happen and came back to new zealand and started rocket lab. but, peter, you also started without the considerable wealth of your billionaire rivals, like elon musk, jeff bezos and richard branson. i mean, how have you managed? where did all the money come from? we raised venture capital out of the united states, out of silicon valley. and it s true that we raised a significantly less amount than all of our competitors, in that sense.
i m just wondering, what areas of space activity are likely to be the most profitable, in your view? 90% of all activity falls within the satellites industry, and that s the gps geospatial intelligence satellite communications stacks. and within that, you ve got layers infrastructure, distribution and applications. and these companies are growing incredibly fast and they re focused on the world s largest industries, like agriculture, insurance, maritime, logistics. regrow is a company that s focused on data fusion, leveraging information from satellites, as well as ground sensors, to enable precision farming. we have an insurance company called arbol that is using satellite data to underwrite and pay out insurance policies. these companies, again,