# I was an early SpaceX employee. My equity helped me pay off student loans, buy a home, and make risky career moves. > Source: > Published: 2026-06-14 08:59:01+00:00 *This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Josh Giegel, the 41-year-old cofounder of the AI startup Gambit, who lives in Los Angeles. It's been edited for length and clarity.* I was in grad school at Stanford, finishing my master's and wanting to do a Ph.D. I had worked [at NASA](https://www.businessinsider.com/nasa-astronaut-shares-3-times-he-was-turned-down-2026-5) the previous summer, and one of the women I worked with was also a Stanford graduate, and was like: "You're going to be so bored at NASA. Why don't you check out this small space company in Los Angeles called SpaceX?" I applied and interviewed in the two weeks between flight three and flight four of [Falcon 1](https://www.businessinsider.com/what-the-first-spacex-falcon-1-launch-was-like-2015-5). I interviewed with Elon; he was still interviewing pretty much everyone at the time. I remember going back to my advisor and saying, "There's nothing I'd rather do on the planet than what he just described." My Master's ended at the end of 2008, and I began in 2009. I was on what's called the propulsion analysis team, which was four or five people. Our responsibility was: How do you design the first reusable rocket engine? A very small group of us was responsible for the initial stuff that was [on Falcon 9](https://www.businessinsider.com/spacex-falcon-9-launches-updates-schedule). I started there when I was 23, and I left when I was 27. It was a little bit of naive immaturity. I knew I wanted to start a company one day, and SpaceX was growing like crazy. I wanted to be on a founding team. I still love the company; I almost went back two or three years later before I ended up starting a company of my own. [The IPO](https://www.businessinsider.com/spacex-ipo-spcx-stock-price-stocks-investing-elon-musk-nasdaq-2026-6) is pretty cool. I'm on a bunch of text threads with guys who were there around the same time, and a couple of them are still there. It's cool to see just how big it became. When I got there, and they gave the offer, there was an equity component. I remember the HR woman who was going over it with me saying, "We think some day, in 10 or 15 years, this might be worth $250,000-300,000." I distinctly remember her saying, "It might get you a nice down payment on a house in Los Angeles." We all laugh about it now. But, at the time, the saying was: the fastest way to become a millionaire in space is to start as a billionaire. Buybacks have been really regular for the last 10 years. Every now and then, we'd take a little bit out. For example, we paid off my wife's [student loans](https://www.businessinsider.com/save-plan-student-loan-borrowers-most-expensive-repayment-trump-changes-2026-6) a number of years ago. We put down a down payment on a house. I joke: We did actually get a down payment on a house! She wasn't lying when she said that. It's a house that, on our normal salaries at startups, we wouldn't have been able to afford without that additional windfall. We also love traveling. We've got a seven-year-old and a one-year-old. We're going to go on slightly more adventurous trips because of it. My wife is also thinking of doing a larger career change that would come with a decent [salary reduction](https://www.businessinsider.com/employees-taking-pay-cuts-huge-numbers-2026-3), which she probably wouldn't have been able to do without something like SpaceX. Professionally, I've always been risky. If the majority of your net worth is tied up in a rocket company, you must be a risk-tolerant individual. Gambit is a VC-backed company. We've raised about $15 million to date, and there are a couple more investment rounds that are coming. The IPO puts you in a position where folks with a substantial amount of equity could be interested in becoming investors. At least ten of the people I worked with intimately have started their own company. There was a band that I played in with five SpaceX people; four of us started our own companies. I played guitar. That whole ecosystem can fund its own endeavors and each other. The quantum of capital that they can put in is not like your typical [family and friends round](https://www.businessinsider.com/how-to-raise-friends-and-family-seed-funding-startup-script-2020-9). That's typically $20,000, $50,000, maybe $100,000. Here, that could be on the order of $1 million, maybe $2 million per check. You also become a bit of a mercenary, asking, "I don't need a paycheck from what I'm going to go do, so what am I going to go do?" It's liberating. The equity also allows me to take a lower salary at my startup, so that I can go out and hire more people to make my company more successful.