In this interview segment, Aaron explains why he joined the Founder Institute accelerator after seeing a LinkedIn post linking startups and NASA. Initially confident—he already had a prototype, patents, and a corporation—he quickly realized the program's depth and his own knowledge gaps. He highlights the unique, high‑caliber network the accelerator provides, noting meetings with astronauts and major space‑industry investors. Aaron also emphasizes the value of the cohort community, describing how shared struggles create a supportive environment that counters the typical isolation of entrepreneurship.
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What did you hope to get out of the program when you decided to join, and were your expectations met? So maybe you could kind of talk a little bit about that, Aaron.
Yeah, um, I joined the program as kind of a lark. I saw something on LinkedIn that my friend posted, and it said something about startups and NASA. I was like, oh, I'm— that's me, I'm doing rockets, you know. So I signed up. I didn't really know what to expect. I went out to the first meeting. I thought I was here, you You know, turns out it was way down here. You know, I had a lot of, I already had a working prototype, I had patents filed, I had a corporation set up. Like, that's a good thing because these are all things that are gonna require you to do. I was pretty full of myself. I was like, ah, I got all this stuff handled. And I got there, I was like, I don't even know what I don't know. It's like, I gotta not only attend this, but I've gotta excel. These people really know what they're doing. It's such a unique network. Um, the relationships you build, uh, within your own cohort, the people they bring in for you to meet— I got to meet astronauts, you know, huge investors in, in the space industry. I mean, it's, it's phenomenal. And what's really great about it is everybody's going the same way. Everybody's going through the same struggle in their own way. So you build this, this group of people where normally entrepreneurship is massively, you know, alone. And now I've got this group of people I can always reach out to be like, hey, I'm having a hard time with this, or I don't understand this, or, you know, so it's been really great, especially for me.
