Esther Dyson, known in the computer networking world as a pundit and conference maker* has now established and held a space industry conference. The interesting concept in the article is that private space companies may now be transitioning from the angel investor phase to attracting serious venture capital money. There's good and bad about that, but that's another topic. The key for VCs is having an exit strategy, a means to get their investment back, and at a multiple. The means postulated here is acquisition by a bigger aerospace company. I'm concerned about this end game because of the lack of financial health of the big boy aeros who are supposed to have the hundreds of millions of spare cash to do these acquisitions. Such ill health for example has stiffled startup investment in telecom.

* personally I don't think much of her but the investors do and that's what counts