7 Go-To-Market Lessons from Building a $37M Space Infrastructure Company

7 Go-To-Market Lessons from Building a $37M Space Infrastructure Company

Two years of coding without pay. That’s how long it took before Atlas Space Operations saw their first dollar of revenue. For most SaaS founders trained on Silicon Valley wisdom about rapid iteration and quick wins, that timeline sounds like failure. For Brad Bode, it was the foundation of a $37 million company.

In a recent episode of Category Visionaries, Brad Bode, Founder CTO & CIO of Atlas Space Operations, a ground software as a service platform, shared lessons from nine years of building space infrastructure. His insights challenge nearly every conventional go-to-market playbook written for B2B founders.

Lesson 1: Bootstrap Longer Than Feels Rational

The first go-to-market lesson is actually about delaying go-to-market. Brad spent roughly two years building before Atlas Space signed their first customer. “I started coding proof of concepts. You know, weren’t getting paid or anything. It was very much a bootstrapped business,” Brad explains.

This wasn’t part-time tinkering. While Brad coded the core platform, his co-founder Sean McDaniel hunted for government contracts that would let them buy antennas for agencies. They assembled a team of retired Air Force personnel and software developers. Everyone got paid eventually. Except Brad. “I never got paid,” he notes about those early years.

The lesson isn’t about suffering for its own sake. It’s about understanding that deep tech infrastructure requires working software before customers will pay. Brad supplemented his income through 10x management, a high-end consulting firm, fixing broken projects for other companies. This gave him income while building Atlas Space’s foundation.

For founders in infrastructure-heavy industries, the question isn’t whether you can generate revenue quickly. It’s whether you can sustain yourself long enough to build something worth buying.

Lesson 2: The Two-Year Government Runway Rule

If you’re selling to the government, multiply your revenue timeline by four. Then add six months as a buffer. Brad is unambiguous about this: “You need a two year Runway with solely focusing on government work, unless you have a really robust commercial pipeline.”

Why two years? Government contracts don’t operate on predictable schedules. A contract you expect in six months might disappear for a year before resurfacing. Atlas Space recently experienced this with a NASA contract. “We thought it was dead and then it for a year and then it came back just recently and we don’t know why it went quiet, but that’s the name of the game,” Brad says.

Contract values are equally unpredictable. That $100 million opportunity might become $50 million right before award. “And while those are large numbers, it’s usually a group or a team effort and everybody needs their take. So you know that money can go away quickly,” Brad explains.

The strategic implication is clear: you need both government and commercial revenue streams. Brad emphasizes this repeatedly: “You have to have a commercial plan and a government plan.” One provides stability while the other provides scale.

Lesson 3: Traditional Marketing Doesn’t Work—Build Through SBIRs

Here’s what won’t help you win government contracts: content marketing, Google AdWords, demand generation campaigns, or growth hacking. “There’s no amount of Google Adwords you could do to help you with the government,” Brad says flatly.

What works instead? Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) contracts. “The best way to start accessing government money and making the government aware of who you are as a company is probably through these small business initiatives. They’re called sivers,” Brad explains.

SBIRs typically range from $1-2 million. They’re publicly broadcast. Anyone can bid. You don’t need prior government work to win one. “You can cite your past performance on commercial work that you might have done or even research papers that might back up your claims,” Brad notes.

The strategic value extends beyond revenue. SBIRs provide past performance credentials, which government buyers weight heavily. Win a few small contracts, prove you can execute, and larger opportunities become accessible. Your marketing is actually winning contracts and demonstrating capability, not running campaigns.

Lesson 4: It’s a Contact Sport, Not a Digital Game

Brad’s chief growth officer calls government sales a “contact sport.” You attend “grip and grins” where you shake hands and make people aware of your company. You take your solution to the road. You build relationships with procurement officers at different agencies.

“It is getting to know the people in the government, getting to know their procurement process, and being willing to bid on some of these smaller contracts so you can scale upwards to win some of the bigger contracts,” Brad explains.

Each government agency operates differently. NASA’s procurement process differs from the Defense Innovation Unit’s, which differs from Space Force’s. “I would say it’s completely different. Some of them might use some of the same terms, but the expectations and the massaging and the meetings you have to take are always very different,” Brad says.

You can’t automate this. You can’t scale it through software. You have to show up, understand each agency’s nuances, and build trust through consistent presence and quality delivery.

Lesson 5: Partner Before You Prime

Small companies face a clearance problem with larger government programs. “Depending on the government program, you might need a facility clearance, which is the ability to hold classified clearances for your employees. It’s not likely that smaller companies have that,” Brad explains.

The solution is partnering with larger aerospace companies on contract bids. They provide the clearance infrastructure and past performance credentials. You provide innovation and specific technical capabilities. “You might partner with a larger company so you can go in on these contracts together to continue to make a name for yourself within the government,” Brad says.

This isn’t a permanent strategy. As you win more contracts and build your own past performance record, you can eventually prime larger contracts yourself. But in the early years, partnerships provide necessary scaffolding to access opportunities you couldn’t reach alone.

Lesson 6: Bet on Category Growth, Even When It’s Unclear

In 2015, everyone agreed space would grow. The pace was uncertain. Industry reports struggled to project what satellite markets would look like in three to five years. “But now you look at it and there is a race to space, so to speak,” Brad observes.

Atlas Space was betting that satellite industry growth would materialize and create demand for their ground software infrastructure. They were right, but it took longer than hoped. “It’s important to note that there’s not a lot of satellites, particularly at that time, there wasn’t a lot of satellites that needed this service per se,” Brad explains.

The key is understanding the underlying economics that will drive growth. SpaceX made launching satellites dramatically cheaper. Hardware costs dropped. Suddenly, startups that couldn’t afford $50 million launches could afford $5 million launches. “The success of SpaceX in launching satellites, just launching and making it inexpensive to launch satellites, is a major factor in a lot of these startups being able to even succeed,” Brad notes.

This lesson applies beyond space. Find infrastructure layers where underlying economics are shifting dramatically. Build for the market that’s emerging, not the market that exists today. Just make sure you can survive long enough to see that market materialize.

Lesson 7: Create the Category Language as You Build

When Atlas Space started, there was no term for what they were doing. Companies leased time on foreign-owned antenna infrastructure. That was it. Around 2017, “ground station as a service” emerged as a descriptor. But Brad felt it undersold their actual offering.

“We looked at it and said, we’re really not just a station that implied infrastructure as a service. And we know there’s a difference between infrastructure as a service and software as a service,” Brad explains. They weren’t just providing infrastructure access. They were coordinating equipment, integrating with the cloud, and layering software that made everything more reliable and secure.

The result: “ground software as a service.” The category language emerged from accurately describing what they actually built, not from market research or positioning exercises. “We’re really SaaS provider, but what are we providing? Ground software,” Brad says.

This matters because category creation is often about naming what you’ve already built rather than inventing something entirely new. Focus on solving the problem. The vocabulary will emerge from the solution.

The Patience Advantage

These seven lessons share a common thread: patience. Two years to first revenue. Two-year runways for government work. Building through small contracts before winning large ones. Betting on category growth that takes years to materialize.

“I think the critical thing in targeting the government is that you must anticipate that it will take longer than you think,” Brad says. That could be the overarching lesson for any founder building infrastructure in deep tech.

The founders who win aren’t necessarily the smartest or best funded. They’re the ones who can sustain effort long enough for their market to catch up to their vision. Atlas Space’s $37 million in funding and their position pioneering ground software as a service came from staying in the game long enough to be right.

For B2B founders building in aerospace, defense, or other deep tech categories, these lessons provide a different playbook. One where contact sport beats digital marketing, where SBIRs replace content funnels, and where two-year timelines are features, not bugs. It’s not faster. But for the founders who can execute it, the moats are considerably deeper.