Welcome to the Arena from ICR – Conversations with Today's Innovators & Business Leaders Jared Isaacman, Founder, Shift4 and Draken International, Part 2 of 2 – The Next Frontier: Exploring the boundaries of space and innovation
If you've been to space and back, you're bound to have an amazing perspective about your own capabilities, and what humans can achieve. Our guest today knows all about that.
On this episode, we're sharing part two of Morgan Brennan's interview with Jared Isaacman, recorded in January at ICR's 26th annual conference in Orlando, Florida. If you didn't catch part one last week, we highly recommend you do. Jared is an extraordinary business leader and on top of his incredible career as founder of Shift4, and Draken International, he's an accomplished pilot and an astronaut.
Jared has made significant contributions to financial technology, defense, and aerospace industries. He is the founder of both Shift4 and Draken International. Jared founded Shift4 in 1999 at 16 years old, and under his leadership as CEO, Shift4 has consistently pushed boundaries. Today, Shift4 employs over 2,500 people and processes $250 billion in payments annually for more than 200,000 customers across the US and Europe.
Apart from his extraordinary success with Shift4, in 2021 Jared made history by commanding Inspiration4, the world's first all-civilian mission to orbit. That mission raised over 250 million dollars for St. Jude Children's Research Hospital. And later this year, he's going to return to space as commander of the Polaris Dawn mission. This is the first of three space flights under the Polaris program, which is a partnership with SpaceX, and we'll hear all about those missions in this next part of the interview.
We're delighted to have Morgan Brennan as the guest host for this interview. Morgan is the co-anchor of CNBC's Closing Bell Overtime. Over the last 10 years, she's held various on-air roles with CNBC and was previously co-anchor of Squawk on the Street and Squawk Alley.
Highlights:
- Jared talks about the differences between being a private and public company (4:37)
- Insight on new upcoming Shift4 projects (5:06)
- Jared tells us the best and worst parts of being in space (6:19)
- Common questions Jared gets about space (7:01)
- Jared gives us an inside look at the training process for astronauts leading up to launch (8:04)
- How seeing space has changed Jared's view of the world (9:57)
- Jared answers whether he ever felt nervous regret before a launch (13:18)
- How Jared talks to his family about space missions (15:50)
- Jared describes what it feels like to come back to Earth from space (16:53)
- How your height changes after going into space and coming back to Earth (18:42)
- More about SpaceX's new Starship project (20:23)
Links:
Morgan Brennan on LinkedIn
Draken International on LinkedIn
Feedback:
If you have questions about the show, or have a topic in mind you'd like discussed in future episodes, email our producer, marion@lowerstreet.co.