Ursa Major
Joe Laurienti didn't start Ursa Major out of thin air—he built it from hard-earned expertise gained at two of the world's most demanding aerospace companies, SpaceX and Blue Origin. In 2015, he spotted a critical vulnerability in America's space infrastructure: the U.S. had relied on Russian rocket engines since the Cold War ended, a dependency that became untenable when Russia invaded Crimea in 2014. American sanctions followed, cutting off access to those engines and exposing a dangerous supply chain gap. Laurienti realized that 3D printing technology could be the answer—a way to rapidly manufacture rocket engines domestically and reduce dependence on foreign suppliers.
With a background in rocket engineering from two of the world's most advanced aerospace companies, Laurienti had both the technical credibility and the market insight to execute on this vision. 3D printing offered a revolutionary approach to engine production compared to traditional manufacturing methods, enabling faster iteration, reduced waste, and the ability to produce complex geometries that would be difficult or impossible with conventional techniques.
Ursa Major has evolved from a startup concept into a multimillion-dollar aerospace company. The company now supplies rocket engines for both government and private space endeavors, positioning American companies to compete globally in space exploration. Beyond commercial space missions, Ursa Major's engines are also supporting the development of hypersonic weapons technology, contributing to U.S. defense capabilities as geopolitical tensions with Russia and China intensify.
- •Founder's deep expertise at SpaceX and Blue Origin provided both technical credibility to execute and insider knowledge of unsolved problems that enterprises desperately needed solved.
- •A sudden geopolitical event (Russian sanctions in 2014) created an urgent, acute supply chain vulnerability that made the problem impossible for enterprises to ignore or delay addressing.
- •3D printing technology fundamentally changed the unit economics and speed of production in a way that made solving the problem feasible where traditional manufacturing approaches would have been uncompetitive.
- •The combination of critical national security implications and limited domestic alternatives created a regulatory and procurement environment where enterprises had strong incentives to buy from a credible American supplier.
- 1.Spend 5+ years working directly inside two or three tier-one companies in your target industry to build technical expertise and identify specific, concrete problems that insiders know are unsolved.
- 2.Identify geopolitical or regulatory shifts that create sudden urgency around an existing problem, then time your entry to coincide with when enterprises transition from tolerating the problem to actively seeking solutions.
- 3.Choose a technology that fundamentally improves on the current solution method (speed, cost, complexity, or supply chain risk) rather than incrementally optimizing the existing approach.
- 4.Position your company to solve a problem that has national security, regulatory compliance, or competitive survival implications so that enterprises view purchasing from you as mandatory rather than discretionary.
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