Christian Schmierer, an aerospace engineer who grew up next to Europe's largest rocket test center, co-founded HyImpulse in 2018. When every expert dismissed hybrid rockets as failed technology from the 1960s, his team did the unthinkable: they built rockets powered by paraffin—essentially candle wax.

Today, HyImpulse has raised over €45 million and became Germany's first privately-funded company to successfully launch a rocket—spending just €15 million to get there while competitors burned through ten times that amount.

In this episode, Christian shares the unfiltered journey of building Europe's most unconventional launch company: how breaking world records as students made founding a company feel inevitable, why four engineers leaving stable jobs at the German Aerospace Center (DLR) turned out to be the right choice and why they had to ship their rocket halfway around the world to the Australian desert for a mission aptly named "Light This Candle.

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Chapters:

(00:00) Introduction

(02:50) From Childhood Curiosity to Student Rocket Team

(09:55) Why Hybrid Rockets? The Technology No One Believed In

(14:32) Failure at 2 Kilometers: Our First Launch Attempt

(22:49) Breaking the World Record: 32.3 Kilometers

(24:04) The 16-Month Gap: From Students to Founders

(31:23) How We Landed Our First Investor

(35:37) Scaling from 4 Founders to 50 People

(42:33) Cracking the Code: Winning EU Funding on the Third Try

(48:25) Light This Candle: Germany's First Private Rocket Launch

(51:21) How One Launch Changed Everything with Investors

(53:05) Raising €45M and Planning the Orbital Rocket

(58:21) The 10-Year Vision

(01:05:03) Advice to Space Founders

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Takeaways:

1) Just get started - Europe rewards those who try: "If you have a great idea then there is definitely room in Europe to do this and follow your dream or your idea and you just have to get started because initially there will be people who say it's impossible or no one needs it."

2) Learn to speak different languages to different stakeholders: "The way how I explain it to a potential investor is completely different whether it's a VC or a strategic, but then if I have to explain it to an authority it's again completely different - I have to use a different language that they understand." Your pitch to a VC, a government agency, and a customer should sound completely different.

3) Capital efficiency is a competitive advantage, not a limitation: HyImpulse launched their first rocket for just €15 million total. "We are actually very capital efficient but of course if you want to build amazing things, big things, then it also requires capital." Being scrappy forces you to make smarter decisions.

4) Start where you have the edge, not where VCs tell you to start: While other rocket startups bought hired experienced engineers, HyImpulse started with basic research on hybrid rockets with paraffin. "We had to start with basic research whereas everyone else, if they wanted, they could have bought an engine."

5) Resilience built in student days becomes the foundation for your company: As students, their first rocket failed at just 2 kilometers after years of work. They built two more rockets and broke the world record at 32.3 kilometers on their third attempt. That "fail, learn, try again" DNA carried directly into HyImpulse - where the stakes were exponentially higher but the resilience was already battle-tested.

6) A successful launch changes everything - but only for non-engineers: "For us as rocket engineers, already in the testing phase on ground it was clear okay this will work at some point. But for non-engineers this is a different story. I can explain to people as many times 'yeah with candle wax, with paraffin you can launch into space' and people say 'yeah okay.' But with that launch, that of course changed - people say 'oh it looks like a real rocket!'"

Rafel Jorda Siquier, an aerospace engineer from Mallorca, founded Open Cosmos in 2015. When they landed their first satellite contract, every university—including his own—refused to give them clean room access. So they went to the Arctic Circle to assemble their first satellite. Today, Open Cosmos has secured over €120 million in contracts in the last year alone, building satellites faster and cheaper than the industry thought possible—while actually turning a profit.

In this episode, Rafael shares the unfiltered reality of building Europe's fastest-growing space company: how launching stratospheric balloons as a student led to an internship that showed him starting a space company was actually possible, why he walked away from a dream job at Airbus—Europe's largest aerospace company—to chase a purpose he couldn't ignore, and why Open Cosmos is now pushing AI capabilities directly into orbit.

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Chapters:

(00:00) Introduction

(02:22) From Stratospheric Balloons to Life Purpose

(09:55) "Is That Even Possible?" - Leaving Airbus at 25

(17:06) Why I Chose Europe Over the US

(21:11) How to Land Your First Contract in 3 Months

(25:58) Convincing My CTO to Quit His Dream Job

(28:53) Why We Assembled our First Satellite near the North Pole

(43:40) Start Where You Have the Edge, Not Where VCs Tell You

(46:40) How to Kill a Product That Doesn't Sell

(48:28) COVID Hit. Everything Broke at Once.

(53:21) How We Became Profitable During a Pandemic

(55:04) How to Build Investor Trust

(57:01) Companies Exist to Solve Problems, Not Raise Money

(01:00:50) Get Traction, Sell, Then Raise

(01:10:34) Advice to Young Founders

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1) Naivety is your most powerful weapon as a founder - don't lose it: "Naivety is essential as a founder because few things are so empowering as naivety to take that first step."

2) Companies exist to solve problems and earn money - not to raise it: "Companies are not out there to raise money. Companies should be out there to solve problems and to earn money on the back of solving those problems." Open Cosmos bootstrapped their first satellite and only raised when they needed to scale into a new product line.

3) Find customers before you find investors: "Get traction, prove the market - sell and then raise. Guys, we did it with satellites. So if we've done it, bootstrapping a satellite, maybe there are multiple industries where this approach may also work."

4) Don't start the company the sake of starting - do it for purpose and need: The entrepreneurial drive should come from seeing a real problem that nobody else is solving, not from wanting to be a founder.

5) Start where you have the edge, not where the market tells you to start: "For me, it was very clear that we had to start where we had an edge. Our edge was we were good system engineers with good design capabilities with an understanding of supply chain, unit economics. So we started building probably the hardest bit - the hardware."

6) Take care of yourself - the founder journey is a marathon: "Make sure you take better care of yourself because the journey as a founder, it's a marathon... Probably I could have achieved the same while not necessarily having to grind it so crazily."

7) When everything breaks at once, speed of decision is everything: "In these situations, if you doubt during two weeks or three weeks or a month to take a decision, you've burned a lot of that extra time. So we took extremely prompt decisions." When COVID hit, Open Cosmos furloughed half the team within days and brought everyone back four months later.

8) Pay your suppliers on time - especially when you can barely afford it: "During those COVID months, we didn't miss or delay a single payment to our suppliers because we didn't want that to be done to us. I know for a fact that many of the suppliers went through that period relying on our payment."

V'yacheslav Shvaydak, an ex-lieutenant with a PhD in economics co-founded DROPLA in 2023. Starting with three co-founders and zero revenue, they pitched military officials: "we're a small startup, our name is nobody, can you please give us some land mines?" They were shown the door. Today, DROPLA has raised millions from international investors and built technology now deployed across Ukraine, expanding from humanitarian de-mining into real-time threat detection systems dictated by battlefield needs.

In this episode, Slava shares the unfiltered reality of building defence tech during wartime: how his experience as a former tank commander sitting on ammunition watching turret caps fly shaped his product decisions, why European defence startups must stress-test products before bringing them to Ukrainian warfighters, the single biggest mistake that destroys defencetech companies, and why there's nothing shameful about forging weapons when democracy needs defending.

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Chapters:

(00:00) Introduction

(01:32) PhD Economist, Engineer & Tank Commander: The Unusual Combo

(09:30) How Slava ended with Starting a Defencetech Company

(25:52) The Breakthrough: Getting Access to Real Land Mines

(27:30) How We Built Europe's Biggest Mine Database

(26:27) First Win: How We Got Ukrainian Forces to Say Yes

(44:31) The Pivot: From Humanitarian to Battlefield

(51:43) How to Actually Raise Money During a War

(01:02:40) Why Defencetech Gives You Zero Second Chances

(01:05:12) The Agreement That Saved Our Founding Team

(01:09:07) What "Battle-Ready" Actually Means

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1) Respect is your currency in defencetech - protect it ruthlessly: "You never badmouth people behind their back. You never badmouth people in the defence industry. The word spreads really quickly about you, your company. This respect is a very bad type of decision that you might choose."

2) Face-to-face confrontation beats silent disrespect every time: "If you think that somebody is wrong, confront him. Openly confront him. It will be a sign of strength. It will be a sign of respect to him. And the truth will be revealed in this battle. And there is nothing bad in having different opinions."

3) Never bring half-baked products to warfighters - it's unforgivable: "If you are a defence tech in Europe, I would strongly advise not to waste Ukrainian warfighters time... You would come with a completely raw, untested, under stress product in your environment, trying to bring something that you know for sure will not work. You know, personally inside. You are just doing that to stamp battle proven on your product and go brag about it."

4) Impossible persistence beats perfect credentials: "Imagine you coming to the military guys and asking them 'hey guys, I'm a small startup with 4 co-founders, we just started, we have zero in revenue, our name is nobody and can you please give us some land mines to play with?' Right now we have the biggest land mine threat signature in Europe I would say without any doubt."

5) There's nothing shameful in building shields and swords - "There is nothing bad in being strong. There is nothing bad in forging a shield. There is nothing bad in forging a sword. There is nothing bad in desire to defend your people. It is a source of strength... Straighten up your backs and work." European defence tech founders: abandon the shame. Defending your people is a source of strength, not embarrassment.

6) Your weird combination is your unfair advantage: "We are all on our personal journeys with a designated set of skills... your pair of eyes have seen stuff that no one else in the world has seen or heard. And your unique connect of the brain is such a unique experience." Don't try to fit into boxes. Your strange path is your edge.#defence #ukraine #entrepreneurship #artificialintelligence