When Jamie Gull graduated from Stanford University in 2007 with a master’s degree in aeronautics, there was one place he wanted to go next: the desert.
The Mojave Desert, to be specific. A company called Scaled Composites had spent years developing experimental aircraft out on that arid land, and Gull wanted in.
He could have tried to get a more traditional aerospace job, but Gull was worried he’d “work five years on a latch” — a common joke about those bigger, slow-moving companies. But at Scaled Composites? “I knew I would build something, and I would do it quickly, and I would be a college graduate who would own an actual outcome,” he said.
Two years later, Gull jumped to SpaceX, where he helped make the Falcon 9 rocket reusable — a major milestone in that company’s history, and the foundation on which it has built an enormously valuable business.
Now, Gull is gearing up for a new challenge: launching an early-stage deep tech fund called Wave Function Ventures. Just last week, he closed Wave Function’s first fund of $15.1 million, and he’s already off and running.
