[hangsi]

> Imagine if you could fund a tech startup by pre-selling product to customers instead of slicing up ownership of your company before it's even off the ground.

Isn't that (not quite literally) the story of early SpaceX? Admittedly a pretty unusual case, but they did get large long term contracts to fund their development.

[m4rtink]

Yeah - SpaceX got their first NASA contract after their first successful Falcon 1 flight, with 3 failures before that. The Falcon 9 needed for that NASA contract for ISS resuply was still on the drawing board back then.