Imagine waking up every morning knowing your job is to walk onto a TV set, smile like you’ve just won the lottery, and deliver a script so tightly spun it could double as aerospace-grade insulation. Not because it’s true. Because it has to be.
You sit there, knowing full well your €1.5 billion “success story” is just a Band-Aid on a financial plan bleeding from the orbital gash left by merging with OneWeb. But you say it with pride: oversubscribed! Market enthusiasm! Growth story! Like you’re trying to will the truth into existence by repeating it often enough. It’s almost noble, in a tragic Shakespearean sort of way.
What’s actually happening? Your satellites are old, your cash burn is real, and your biggest customer segment (European governments chasing the sovereignty buzzword) wouldn’t even be in the room if Elon hadn’t accidentally turned off Ukraine. And yet, with stunning conviction, you tell the world this is all part of the plan. That competing with Starlink’s $100 consumer plan was never the goal. You were always focused on B2B. Naturally.
And honestly? That’s the part that breaks through. Not the obfuscation, not the PR choreography. But the sheer, day-in-day-out commitment to a narrative you likely don’t even believe in anymore. The psychological gymnastics it must take to convince not just the world, but yourself, that this lopsided chess match with SpaceX is somehow fair. That another 440 satellites, funded on hopes and borrowed equity, will tip the scales.
You talk about “Europe’s only low Earth orbit constellation” with the enthusiasm of someone reciting a country’s national dish at customs. Not because it changes anything, but because maybe if you say it enough, someone in Berlin might write a check.
And through all of it, you show up. Every interview, every earnings call, every investor day. With conviction. With bullet points. With graphs no one believes. Because you don’t get to not believe. That’s not in the job description. You’re a CEO, the closest thing capitalism has to a stage actor with equity exposure.
No one really talks about how exhausting that must be.
Convincing others is hard enough.
But doing it while trying not to choke on the disbelief sitting in your own throat?
That’s something else entirely.
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