People, Principles,
and some House Rules:
Among our team are those who have worked on every front of sovereignty and national security.
They have launched satellites, flown jetfighters deep into enemy territory and dismantled their camps, commanded war ships, struck deals with militias, led patrols, forged alliances, called for fire, fought wars you’ve heard of — and the ones you haven't. They’ve done the mundane without complaint, and sealed treaties at knife’s edge.
Yet, they all converge on the guiding principles for our little project.
Principles
Don’t feast with people you wouldn't starve with.
初心
nullius en verba.
IF.
Obsession & hard work > talent.
Master the details.
Speed matters. Deadlines are sacred. Results count.
Money is a measure of results.
PO > PR.
Space is the next silk route - build roads, not shops.
‘No thanks’ till ‘f**k yes.’
Sovereign individuals only.
The only credential check for hiring is: 'Show me what you built.'
Work like a Captain, party like a pirate.
Make the world dream.
Make physics dangerous again.
Kawa Space was founded by Kris Nair in March 2019. The plan is to build a critical application and infrastructure layer for the global space industry.
This is the third iteration of Kawa Space. Previously we tried a bunch of different things in space data and hardware: We tried building a great software stack, and a wonderful ML stack. It worked for sometime but our horizontal focus didn’t give us enough proof of product market fit. It was heart breaking, but remember all cool cats have many lives.
For the last 18 months or so, we have been spending a lot of time with a specific set of customers – this taught us a lot about what they urgently need and how much they’ll pay for it. We are building exactly what they need, we are co-creating the solution with them. They wrote a nice cheque too.
Structured FAQ/Feelings.
Teams.
The teams will be small, each individual owning a key product or feature which matters to our end users.
For example, when we ask who is working on ML pipeline for a particular problem set, the answer will be a human name, rather than SDE2, or Chief Architect or CTO.
Job Titles.
Designations are random. We don’t have titles. You join us as a person, you are defined by the work you do here.
"But hey if you don’t have titles, what will I write on LinkedIn?”
Write whatever, write CEO if you want or better write what you do,
eg: Every day our satellites downlink 260GB of data through our distributed ground stations across the world. Our customers want the metadata of these large datasets ASAP. I along with person A, B and C make the outcome happen in 30 seconds.
“Ok, but I was the Assistant (to) Regional Manager at Dunder Mifflin Sr Vice President of Boeing/Lockheed/ISRO/NASA?”
Ok, good for you. Kawa Space is not Dunder Mifflin/Boeing/ISRO/NASA, apples and oranges – you can’t compare.
Sovereign individuals.
You don’t need a manager. You know what to do. You know what's important.
The idea is to co-create something so cool that it makes our past resume-worthy achievements seem like just a blip—and to do it all in style.
New People.
Our hiring process is a little different. The final question we ask ourselves is: If this person starts a company in the future, would I join them full-time as an employee? If the answer is yes, you're hired. Feel free to show us some proof if you'd like—maybe a funny weekend meme project, some hardware you hacked, or anything else that shows your creativity.
No random salary negotiations. For each role, considering an experience bracket & cities we operate from, we have budgets allocated. In your current job you make X , and our bracket is 2X, you get 2X – all humans irrespective of gender or schools attended or companies worked.
It's fine to walk in someone else's shoes—as long as they keep them polished.
Take the time to listen to smart people with whom you disagree.
Forward Deployed Teams.
All roles at Kawa Space are forward-deployed engineering roles. Sure, some days you'll enjoy a nice private office. But if your end user is stationed at the national borders or in the middle of a deployment in the Indian Ocean, we go meet them and build things with them right there.
This is not for everyone but then we are not looking for everyone.
Be Nice.
Be nice to each other. Startups are hard, no time, money is tight, a testing instrument costs more than our Series A round etc etc.
Read.
Strongly urge you to read the following books while you thinking about joining us: Book of Five Rings (Miyamoto Musashi), Skin in the Game (Taleb), the Fabric of Reality (David Deutsch), Interviewing Users (Steve Portigal), Principles (Ray Dalio), Impro: Improvisation and the Theatre* (Keith Johnstone), integral Humanism (Deendayal Upadhyaya) and some more.
* yep.
Workout, eat well, play a sport with friends. Occasionally sit in silence and meditate.
