Dapper Labs

SpaceX

Dapper Labs

Platform and marketplace — Dapper Labs builds NFT products and earns revenue from primary sales (minting new NFTs and selling them to users), marketplace transaction fees (5% on peer-to-peer trades), and licensing fees paid to sports leagues for using their IP. The company also built the Flow blockchain, which it controls and operates.

Revenue is heavily tied to NFT trading volume and new user acquisition. The licensing deals with NBA, NFL, UFC, and LaLiga give Dapper Labs exclusive rights to create digital collectibles from official content — a massive competitive moat when the market is hot, and a significant cost burden when the market cools.

SpaceX

SpaceX makes money three ways. First, launch services — companies and governments pay SpaceX to put their satellites into orbit.

A Falcon 9 launch costs about $67 million, which undercut the competition by 75% when it debuted. Second, Starlink — SpaceX's own satellite internet constellation, which is now generating over $6 billion in annual revenue from 4+ million subscribers.

Third, government contracts — NASA pays SpaceX to ferry astronauts to the International Space Station and the DoD pays for national security launches.

The secret sauce is reusability. Before SpaceX, every rocket was used once and thrown into the ocean.

SpaceX figured out how to land the first stage booster back on Earth and fly it again. A single Falcon 9 booster has flown over 20 times.

That's like the difference between throwing away an airplane after every flight versus keeping it for decades.

Dapper Labs

Roham Gharegozlou was running a blockchain company called Axiom Zen when his team launched CryptoKitties in November 2017 — a game where users could buy, breed, and trade digital cats as NFTs on Ethereum. It went so viral that it congested the entire Ethereum network and accounted for 25% of all Ethereum traffic.

CryptoKitties proved that people would pay real money for unique digital assets, but it also proved that Ethereum couldn't handle consumer-scale applications. Gharegozlou spun out Dapper Labs in 2018 to solve both problems: build consumer NFT products AND build a blockchain (Flow) that could actually handle millions of users.

The NBA came calling in 2019, licensing their highlights for what became NBA Top Shot. When Top Shot launched in October 2020, a LeBron James dunk clip sold for $208,000.

By February 2021, Top Shot was processing $50 million in daily transactions. The NFT boom had arrived and Dapper Labs was at the center of it.

SpaceX

In 2001, Elon Musk had just sold PayPal to eBay for $1.5 billion and was sitting on roughly $180 million after taxes. Most people would buy an island.

Musk decided to buy rockets. His original idea was even weirder — he wanted to send a small greenhouse to Mars called "Mars Oasis" to reignite public interest in space exploration.

He flew to Russia three times to buy refurbished ICBMs. The Russians kept raising the price and at one point literally spat on him.

On the flight home from that last failed Russia trip, Musk opened a spreadsheet and started calculating the raw material costs of building a rocket from scratch. He realized the materials were only about 3% of the typical price of a rocket.

The rest was markup, inefficiency, and monopoly pricing by companies like Boeing and Lockheed Martin. He decided to build his own.

SpaceX was founded in June 2002 in a warehouse in El Segundo, California. Musk put in $100 million of his own money.

He hired Tom Mueller, a legendary rocket propulsion engineer who had been building rocket engines in his garage as a hobby. The first rocket, Falcon 1, was supposed to be the cheapest orbital rocket ever built.

It took six years and three spectacular explosions before it finally worked.

Dapper Labs

Licensing deals with major sports leagues gave Dapper Labs content that no competitor could replicate. NBA Top Shot specifically targeted sports fans, not crypto enthusiasts — a much larger addressable market.

The custodial wallet and credit card payments removed every crypto friction point, making it possible for someone with zero blockchain knowledge to buy an NFT in two minutes. Pack drops with limited supply created urgency and excitement similar to physical trading card releases.

Building the Flow blockchain gave Dapper Labs control over transaction costs and speed, avoiding Ethereum's congestion and gas fee problems. Celebrity involvement (Michael Jordan, Kevin Durant, Will Smith all invested) generated press coverage and credibility.

SpaceX

SpaceX's growth strategy was simple: be cheaper than everyone, then be better than everyone, then be the only option.

They started by undercutting the launch market. The United Launch Alliance (Boeing + Lockheed Martin joint venture) was charging $300-400 million per launch.

SpaceX offered $67 million. Government agencies and commercial satellite companies started lining up.

Reusability was the real game-changer. Landing a rocket booster looked like science fiction when SpaceX first attempted it in 2013.

They failed over and over — spectacular ocean landings, explosions on drone ships, near-misses. But in December 2015, a Falcon 9 first stage landed back at Cape Canaveral.

It was the first time an orbital-class rocket had ever landed after a mission. Now they do it routinely — it's almost boring.

Starlink created a completely new revenue stream. Instead of just launching other people's satellites, SpaceX launched thousands of its own.

By 2024, Starlink had over 4 million subscribers and was generating billions in revenue. It turned SpaceX from a launch company into a telecom company.

Dapper Labs

The NFT market collapsed. NBA Top Shot's monthly sales fell from $224 million in February 2021 to under $5 million by late 2022.

The $7.6 billion valuation from 2021 looks nearly impossible to justify with current revenue. Massive layoffs — the company cut over 50% of staff in multiple rounds through 2022 and 2023.

The Flow blockchain never achieved the developer adoption needed to become a major ecosystem — most NFT activity stayed on Ethereum and later Solana. Licensing deals with sports leagues require minimum guarantees regardless of volume, creating fixed costs that hurt when revenue drops.

Regulatory risk — the SEC has investigated whether NBA Top Shot moments are unregistered securities. And the core question: are digital sports highlights a lasting collectible category or were they a pandemic-era novelty?

SpaceX

The early days nearly killed the company. SpaceX's first three Falcon 1 launches all failed.

The first one in 2006 crashed 25 seconds after liftoff due to a corroded fuel line nut. The second in 2007 reached space but the second stage shut down early.

The third in 2008 failed because the first and second stages collided during separation. Musk had enough money for one more attempt.

If flight four failed, SpaceX was dead.

Flight four worked. On September 28, 2008, Falcon 1 became the first privately developed liquid-fuel rocket to reach orbit.

Musk has said he was so stressed during that period he was throwing up regularly.

The financial pressure was existential. Musk was simultaneously funding Tesla, which was also on the brink of bankruptcy in 2008.

He had to split his last $40 million between the two companies. He borrowed money for rent.

But right at the end of 2008, NASA awarded SpaceX a $1.6 billion contract to resupply the International Space Station. That contract saved the company.

Starship development has been its own saga. The rocket has exploded multiple times during testing.

Each failure costs hundreds of millions. But SpaceX treats failures as data — they move faster by blowing things up and iterating than competitors do by being cautious.

Dapper Labs

NBA Top Shot — officially licensed digital basketball highlights ("moments") sold as NFTs. Users buy packs, trade moments, and complete challenges.

NFL All Day — same concept applied to American football highlights. UFC Strike — officially licensed UFC fight moments as NFTs.

LaLiga Golazos — Spanish soccer league highlights as digital collectibles. Flow blockchain — Dapper Labs' own blockchain designed for consumer applications, used by NBA Top Shot and other products.

Dapper Wallet — custodial crypto wallet that works with credit cards, removing the complexity that makes normal crypto wallets unusable for regular people.

SpaceX

Falcon 9 is the workhorse — the most-launched rocket in the world. It carries satellites to orbit and astronauts to the ISS, and the first stage lands itself for reuse.

Falcon Heavy is three Falcon 9 boosters strapped together — the most powerful operational rocket in the world until Starship came along. Dragon is the spacecraft that carries astronauts and cargo to the ISS.

It's the only American vehicle currently flying humans to space. Starlink is the satellite internet service — over 6,000 satellites in orbit delivering broadband to 100+ countries.

Starship is the big one — the tallest and most powerful rocket ever built, designed to carry 100+ people to Mars. It's still in testing but has already completed a full flight.

Dapper Labs

Investors include Andreessen Horowitz, Coatue Management, GV (Google Ventures), Samsung, and celebrity investors including Michael Jordan, Kevin Durant, and Will Smith. The $7.6 billion valuation was reached in a 2021 funding round.

SpaceX

Founders Fund, Draper Fisher Jurvetson, Google, Fidelity Investments, Valor Equity Partners, Baillie Gifford, a]6z (Andreessen Horowitz), NASA (as customer/partner)