I've never heard of a serious investor that takes these numbers without a teaspoon of salt. I think the total addressable market is generally a bigger concern. At this point, it looks like Starlink is likely to own the whole market (of high-ish bandwidth, low-ish latency internet in remote-ish places). No one else is even close for the necessary launch cadence to maintain a very LEO satellite fleet.

Posted to HN using a Starlink connection.

They missed by 95%, can't say that's a great call, can you?

>This was a presentation to investors, to drum up support for their plans

Isn't that the issue, though?

This is why startups are only allowed to raise from "accredited investors" and not the general public. The fact that whatever technology they claimed to have at the time worked and wasn't a true fraud when pitched is really all that matters. Anything forward looking is a projection the investors can choose to believe or not.

> missed by 95%, can't say that's a great call, can you?

Yes. They’re within an order of magnitude. On the north side of zero. That’s a good prediction, particularly given the 20mm user figure seems realistic.

You cannot say with a straight face that predicting 20 million users, getting only 1 million, is "a good prediction".

> cannot say with a straight face that predicting 20 million users, getting only 1 million, is "a good prediction"

Yes, I can. Especially when the prediction is ten years hence and made about a product that doesn’t exist predicated on a launch frequency nobody has attained. 1mm users means core leaps in launch frequency, beam shaping, operations and sales came together. Furthermore, sitting at the deadline, the 20mm isn’t unrealistic. For hard technology venture, that’s a good prediction. (A lot of tech meets its order of magnitude threshold only to learn the goal is unrealistic, ever.) Not spectacular. But also not bad.

Within an order of magnitude would be 2M users. This is not within an order of magnitude.

> This is not within an order of magnitude

10^6 vs 2 x 10^7. An order of magnitude. Order of magnitude isn’t literally divide by ten. Granted, there is a qualitative difference between 1 to 10mm and 1 to 99mm, but they’re both one order of magnitude apart.

Thanks!

just because investors have the presumption that presentations are lies and founders have the incentive to lie during the presentation doesn't somehow warp reality into thinking that prediction was a good one.

It may have constituted a good business decision to lie during presentation day, but whether or not that's true is wholly independent of the state and accuracy of the prediction itself; that prediction sucked.

They are behind on their projections from 2015, aboutt what would be achieved 7 years later in 2022. How many business plans that are to be executed over a 7 period hit the mark? I wonder if you hold everyone, every business to such a high standard? Or is their something you dislike about SpaceX?

My opinion what SpaceX has achieved with starlink is super impressive . Sure they are behind schedule, but have achieved so much. They are no longer losing money on their dishes. They have launched thousands of satellites. Their subscriber count is rapidly increasing.

Feb 2021: 10k subscribers Jan 2022: 145k May 2022: 400k May 2023: 1.5 million

https://www.cnbc.com/2022/01/06/spacex-starlink-internet-ser... https://starlinkinsider.com/starlink-surpasses-1-5-million-s... https://www.cnbc.com/2022/05/25/spacexs-starlink-surpasses-4...