Jared Isaacman, a former high school dropout living in his parents’ basement in New Jersey, has achieved remarkable success as a tech billionaire and space tourist. His journey from humble beginnings to becoming a pioneer in space exploration is nothing short of extraordinary.
On Thursday, Mr. Isaacman and SpaceX engineer Sarah Gillis briefly stepped into the vacuum of space to test the company’s new spacesuits during the five-day Polaris Dawn mission. It was the first time non-professional astronauts from a private company performed a spacewalk.
Isaacman said, “When I was 5 years old, I decided that I would go to space. At that time I had thought a lot about it, it just took me some time to implement it.” CNBC Make It In 2021.
Isaacman’s entrepreneurial spirit was evident from a young age. At the age of 16, he dropped out of high school and founded a payment processing company called Shift4 Payments. Despite facing initial challenges, his company quickly gained momentum and became a leader in the industry.
To begin his entrepreneurial journey, he used a $10,000 check from his grandfather as seed money and set up shop in the basement of his childhood home. “You know, $10,000 was all you needed to build a couple of computers,” Isaacman said. “It wasn’t expensive. And, you needed a couple of phones, and that was enough to get you going.”
He told the media outlet that his first employees included his friend Brendan Lauber, who was Shift4’s chief technology officer until last year, and Isaacman’s father, who was a salesman and previously worked at a home security company.
His company has a market value of $7.4 billion and now has 2,000 employees nationwide.
“At that age you can never imagine the company will become a billion-dollar company,” Isaacman said. “The best times in a startup are when you’re eating Chinese food with eight people in the basement and everybody shares knowledge, and you share your successes and failures together, and you learn together.”
The success of Shift4 earned Isaacman billionaire status and he has since made significant contributions to space exploration. He funded and led the first civilian mission to space aboard SpaceX’s Dragon capsule, setting the record for the longest civilian spaceflight.
In 2009, Isaacman set a world record by flying a Cessna Citation CJ2 around the world in less than 62 hours—about 20 hours faster than the previous record holder. Three years later, he founded Draken International, a company that trains student pilots for the U.S. Air Force. In 2020, he sold the company to investment firm Blackstone Group for a “nine-digit sum,” Forbes reports.
Isaacman’s passion for space exploration extends far beyond his personal accomplishments.
“As far as I’m concerned, I’m very lucky in life,” Isaacman told USA TODAY. Bloombergbefore the spacewalk. “You know — teenage basement startup, just trying to buy pizza on the weekend, and it’s turned into quite an empire.”
