Most of the world is excited by some form of technology or other. We are attracted to the shiny, the new, the possibility, and we can either participate or watch from the sidelines. In the world of technology there are always egos involved because the technology changes the established way of doing things. To be an early adapter, you need to take a risk and with all risk sometimes it works out wonderfully and sometimes money is lost.

In an article by Gus Carlson of the Globe and Mail, the two richest people on the planet are Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk. There sources of income are different – Mr. Bezos with Amazon and Mr. Musk with Tesla, but they compete in space. Their high-profile space race is taking passengers into space but their real competition is deploying satellites.

With Amazon, the need for connectivity is everywhere and one method to achieve it is through satellites. Project Kuiper is slated to deploy 3,000 low-Earth orbit satellites. This means soon where ever you go in earth, you should be able to get a signal. The cost to do this is $17 billion. Mr. Bezos was using a rocket going up on Florida’s Space Coast or Cape Canaveral.

Mr. Musk through Space X owns Star Link which has thousands of satellites in operation with over 5 million customers. The quality and reliability of the Starlink service is remarkably good. Mr. Musk uses the Brownsville, Texas location where he has launched numerous rockets and brought them back safely (there are some interesting You Tube videos about the rockets coming back).

Linking to dividend paying stocks, often with technology the race is to be the first out of the gate while achieving quality and reliability. The customers come and similar to many customers, once signed up, it takes a large effort to move to another provider. Often times it more profitable to invest in the company which is first to market, than in the second company, because the normal rules of business of revenues – expenses equals profit or loss.

There are more questions than answers, till the next time – to raising questions.