How Atlas Space Operations Bootstrapped for 2 Years Without Paying the Founder CTO

How Atlas Space Operations Bootstrapped for 2 Years Without Paying the Founder CTO

Two years is a long time to work without a paycheck. For Brad Bode, it was the price of building something that would eventually raise $37 million and pioneer an entirely new category in space infrastructure.

In a recent episode of Category Visionaries, Brad Bode, Founder CTO & CIO of Atlas Space Operations, a ground software as a service platform, shared the exact playbook for surviving what most deep tech founders fear most: the valley of death between starting and first revenue.

The Bootstrap Reality in Deep Tech

Most SaaS wisdom tells founders to launch fast, get to revenue quickly, and iterate based on customer feedback. That playbook breaks down completely when you’re building infrastructure for space communication.

“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 a few months of runway. It was nearly two years of building before Atlas Space signed their first customer, NOAA, for antenna installation in Ghana.

The math is brutal. Most founders can’t afford two years without income. Brad’s solution wasn’t raising a massive seed round or finding a wealthy angel. It was structuring his life to survive on consulting income while building Atlas Space in parallel.

The 10x Management Strategy

Here’s the specific tactic Brad used: he joined 10x management, a high-end consulting firm that connects elite software developers with companies that have broken projects. “I was part of 10x management as a consulting firm, like a high end consulting firm. And I would go and fix bad projects, which was kind of nice too. You learn a lot by doing that,” Brad says.

This approach solved multiple problems simultaneously. First, it provided income. Brad needed to eat and pay bills while building Atlas Space. Second, it kept his skills sharp. Fixing broken projects across different companies exposed him to various technical challenges and architectures. Third, it was flexible. Unlike a full-time job, consulting let him control his hours and fit in Atlas Space development.

The key insight is that Brad didn’t try to bootstrap with no income. He structured a parallel income stream that complemented rather than competed with his founding work. He wasn’t splitting time between two startups or juggling multiple equity positions. He traded hours for cash through consulting, then invested equity time in Atlas Space.

Asymmetric Commitment Across the Team

Brad’s willingness to work without pay wasn’t shared equally across the founding team. His co-founder Sean McDaniel focused on hunting government contracts—looking for opportunities where they could buy antennas for agencies and install them. They assembled a small team: retired Air Force personnel who understood RF communication and antenna systems, plus software developer friends Brad brought in for specific projects.

“I never got paid,” Brad notes about those first two years. But others did. “So we assembled a team of people who just wanted to do something different. Some people that were retired from the Air Force who knew the RF communication and knew a lot about antenna systems and software developers like me. And then I, you know, pulled in some software developer friends who I’d known to do small pieces of work that we did pay them for.”

This is a critical distinction. Brad didn’t demand everyone work for free. He paid contractors and specialists when they contributed specific work. He took equity instead of salary as the technical founder who could afford to defer compensation through consulting income. This asymmetric structure let them conserve capital while building expertise.

The Variable Intensity Model

Another important detail: the first year wasn’t 60-hour weeks of unpaid grinding. “It wasn’t, you know, 40 hours a week, 60 hours a week. It was when we could fit it in,” Brad explains. “So I did some, you know, side work in that time period as well.”

This variable intensity approach serves a specific purpose in deep tech bootstrapping. When you’re building infrastructure that requires customer validation before product-market fit, you can’t always work at maximum intensity. Sometimes you’re waiting on government procurement processes. Sometimes you’re waiting on technical breakthroughs. Sometimes you’re just building steadily toward a milestone.

The consulting work filled those gaps. Rather than forcing full-time commitment to a startup that couldn’t sustain full-time salaries, Brad structured his time to match the natural rhythm of infrastructure development. Intense coding sprints when needed. Consulting projects during slower periods.

Why Two Years Specifically

The timeline matters. “I think it was about a year and a half to two years, you know, the first year of which there wasn’t a ton of. I mean, it was mostly just coding in that first year,” Brad recalls.

Year one focused primarily on proof of concept development. Building the core software that would coordinate antenna equipment, integrate with cloud infrastructure, and provide the reliability layers that would eventually differentiate Atlas Space from simple infrastructure providers.

Year two accelerated as they got closer to their first contract. Once they identified the NOAA opportunity in Ghana, the intensity increased. They had to prove the software worked, refine it, and demonstrate they could deliver on a government contract.

The two-year timeline reflects a deeper truth about deep tech: you need working software before customers will pay, but working software for space infrastructure takes longer to build than consumer apps or traditional SaaS tools.

The Risk Calculation That Made It Work

Brad’s bootstrap strategy only worked because he correctly assessed his personal risk tolerance and financial situation. Coming from 12 years at TRW and Northrop Grumman, he had aerospace experience and software development expertise. The 10x management consulting route was available precisely because he had valuable skills and a track record.

He also had a clear exit alternative. At one point, Brad almost joined the FBI. “I almost joined the FBI at one point. I got invited to a class and I turned that down primarily because of money,” he notes. The fact that he had other options reduced the existential risk of the bootstrap approach.

This is the part that founders often miss when they hear bootstrap success stories. Brad wasn’t betting everything with no backup plan. He was making a calculated decision to defer founder compensation while maintaining income through adjacent work that leveraged his existing expertise.

The Legitimacy Milestone

The bootstrap strategy had a specific end condition: winning their first government contract. “Once we won that, you know, it was really off to the races because now we had to prove that the software worked, which we did, and we had to refine it and we had to make it better,” Brad explains.

That NOAA contract provided more than revenue. It provided legitimacy. “The government putting their weight behind something is usually a very good thing, and it’s a good sign,” Brad notes. With that validation, raising capital became viable. Hiring became possible. The bootstrap phase could end because they’d proven the core thesis.

The Principles That Transfer

Three principles from Brad’s bootstrap approach apply beyond space infrastructure:

First, match your intensity to the natural development rhythm of what you’re building. Not everything requires 80-hour weeks from day one. Deep tech often has periods of intensive building followed by periods of waiting for validation or contracts.

Second, structure parallel income that complements rather than competes with your founding work. Consulting in your domain keeps skills sharp and provides steady income. Taking another co-founder role or building a second startup creates impossible conflicts.

Third, know your end condition. Brad wasn’t bootstrapping indefinitely. He was bootstrapping until the first major contract proved the model worked. Having that milestone defined prevented the bootstrap phase from extending past its useful life.

What It Actually Costs

Two years of deferred compensation as a founding CTO isn’t small. Even at modest Silicon Valley engineering salaries, Brad left $300,000+ on the table. But the equity position he built by being willing to work for free during the critical early phase became worth multiples of that deferred salary once Atlas Space raised $37 million.

The real cost wasn’t the salary. It was the opportunity cost. Brad could have joined another startup with immediate equity and salary. He could have taken that FBI position. He could have stayed at Northrop Grumman with its steady paycheck and benefits.

The bootstrap choice only made sense because Brad believed the space infrastructure opportunity was large enough to justify the sacrifice, and because he had the consulting option to survive the gap.

For founders staring at their own valley of death, Brad’s playbook offers a specific path: find parallel income in your domain, build with variable intensity that matches your market’s natural rhythm, and know exactly what milestone ends the bootstrap phase. Two years is survivable when you have a plan for all three.