11.2 KM/S

​

The velocity needed to break free of Earths gravity. 

At 11.2 Space Ventures, our mission is to help investors to find and guide their investments to the stars.

​

Founded by Daniel Levan, who brings a wide range of experience to the table. He has worked many roles across various institutions and companies across the Space Industry. Working at startups, traditional space companies, and government alike, he brings his knowledge and network to bear, helping you navigate the Space Industry.​

​​​

His first professional role in the industry was working for, and eventually managing, the Cal Poly CubeSat Lab. The CubeSat Lab was founded by Jordi Puig-Suari, co-inventor of the CubeSat Standard, and inductee to the Space Foundation's Space Technology Hall of Fame. While at The CubeSat Lab, Daniel tested and built satellites and satellite deployers, helped organize Small Sat conferences, assisted the operations team for NASA JPL's MARCO (MaRsCubesatOne), which is the first interplanetary CubeSat, founded the AI&T (Assembly Integration, and Test) team at the lab, and spent some time as the Lab's manager.

 

He also spend time working at NASA JPL, where he both worked in Planetary Protection, protecting other planets from Earth based microbial life, as well as in the Harnessing group, learning about the often overlooked parts of building a spacecraft, assisting in the manufacturing and test of the Mars Perseverance Rover, as well as researching and testing future connectorization solutions for Martian applications.

​

He later went on to work at Ball Aerospace, a large aerospace contractor of about 5000 people, where he worked on the WSF-M weather satellite as a System-Operations engineer. His position at the intersection between ground software, flight software, and systems insuring he was keyed in to almost every part of the large 2 story satellite, a collaboration between Ball, the US Space Force, and the US Navy . There, aside from his day to day job, he led first contact testing on WSF-Ms external instrument, led the integration of NEPTUNE, the Navy's ground software, with Ball's systems, and more.

​​​​

After that he moved to York Space Systems, where he worked as a Systems Engineer on both the Tranche-0 and Tranche-1 programs, a 10 and 42 satellite constellation respectively. The Tranche programs are for building large networks of optical communication satellites with global reach, and were York's first non-internally funded launch. Under this role he wore many hats, from hands on alignment testing of the optical instruments, to working on the software interface between the bus and the instruments, to building GSE, and more. He also concurrently built the Launch team from the ground up, building the company's relationship with SpaceX as well all of the company's procedures, logistics, manpower budgets, and knowledge about launch on US soil. While he was at York Space Systems, the company sold a majority stake to AE Industrial Partners at a valuation of ~1.3 Billion USD.

​​

After being exposed to the Venture Capital industry, Daniel realized there was a service that he could provide that was desperately needed. The Space Industry is booming. Investment in space companies, was $47 Billion USD in 2021, and in the past few years there has been a lot of investment, mergers, and acquisitions. In 2024 year the Japanese government has also opened a 1 trillion Yen (6.43 billion USD) fund for private space companies. With all of this, the development of satellite based internet and data industries, as well as the huge amounts of money being invested in the future lunar and cislunar ecosystem by NASA, Blue Origin, SpaceX, and more, it will only grow from here. With his broad and deep knowledge of what it takes to go to space, Daniel saw an opportunity to help VC's with his industry knowledge, helping them get their investments to Escape Velocity!            

​​​​