Speaking
I talk about the money.
Space is sexy, and the sexy part gets the stage. Somebody still has to underwrite the hardware, insure it, lend against it, and recover the principal. That is my work, and it is what I bring to your stage.
Your audience walks out with numbers they can check, companies they can look up, and a method for telling a company with an engine from a company with a rendering. I do not sell anything from a stage. I explain how the money works, and an audience can tell the difference inside the first few minutes.
Three talks · fifteen to forty-five minutes
Magic Space Sprinkles: What a Real Space Company Looks Like on Paper
Every space company has a story and the good ones also have a balance sheet. I hand your audience the short list worth checking before anybody believes a press release: who has actually paid, what the hardware has done, which contracts survive a change of administration, and which line on the cap table decides who gets paid first. Then I run it against companies they have heard of, and show what the winners had in common years before anybody called them winners.
Substance Is Sexy: Reading the Balance Sheet Behind the Space Boom
The boom is real. Launch costs have fallen by more than an order of magnitude in a generation and this industry now carries businesses that couldn't have existed in 2010. What does substance look like on a page, and how fast can you find it? I walk your audience through the Sprinkle Test, five questions that separate a company with an engine from a company with a rendering, and run it live against real data.
Beyond Venture: The Capital Spine the Space Industry Forgot to Build
Venture capital built the first generation of commercial space, and venture capital cannot build the second. Equity is the most expensive money a founder will ever take, and an industry full of hard assets and long-term government contracts should not be financing itself entirely from venture capital. I lay out the three missing pieces: credit secured against hardware already on orbit, insurance priced on real loss history rather than on speculation, and the ground underneath the launch sites. I built all three, so your audience gets deal structures rather than theory.
Autumn 2026
Where I will be.
- 31 Aug – 3 Sep
LEAPRiyadh, Saudi Arabia
- 6 – 11 Sep
Miami to Dubai Trade MissionDubai, United Arab Emirates
- 23 – 24 Sep
Off World SummitSpace Center Houston, Texas
- 24 Sep
Critical Infrastructure ForumFort Worth, Texas
- 5 – 9 Oct
International Astronautical CongressAntalya, Turkey
- 25 – 28 Oct
Space for Island Nations ConferenceMaldives
- 2 – 3 Nov
UncorrelatedGrand Cayman
- 4 – 5 Nov
NASA SummitSpace Coast, Florida
- 7 – 8 Nov
Kennedy Air ShowSpace Coast, Florida
Event organizers: I book a small number of engagements outside this list, and dates through the end of the year are still open. Write to me and I will tell you within a day whether the date works.
How I work with you
How I work with you.
- Formats
Keynote, 15 to 45 minutes. Fireside, 20 to 40. Panels on finance, infrastructure and policy. Moderation, which I've done for years and will keep on time. Graduate lectures, 60 to 90.
- Copy
Send me the session description before you publish it. I write my own, and I will turn it around the same day.
- Slides
My slides run 16:9 and reach your production team a week before the event. If your format has no screen, I deliver the talk without them.
- Format
I do not work from a script. Leave time for questions from the floor rather than running me to the last minute.
- Travel
If your event is outside the United States, tell me who is covering flights and lodging before you announce the slot.
- Moderators
You are welcome to open with any of the three lines on the home page, or with this one: "A plan with one miracle in it is a company. A plan with three is a religion, and I don't invest in those, though I do admire the conviction."
Event organizers: if you want me on your stage, write to me with the date, the city, the format, and who is in the room. I will tell you within a day whether I can do it.
me@meagancrawford.com Speaker kit (ZIP)
The speaker kit holds the three talks as plain text for your programme, the biographies at three lengths, headshots and photographs. Journalists want the press kit instead.