Varidus Space Startups: Building an Independent Ranking Methodology

Jaswanth was brought into a SPAC-related project at Varidus with a clear brief: identify the best private space companies in the US market, within a defined valuation range, for a potential acquisition target list.

He started by reviewing public rankings from Gartner, Forrester, and other market research firms. But he quickly decided those lists were not sufficient on their own. Each firm had its own ranking ideology, and none of them were calibrated to the specific investment criteria the client needed.

So he built his own methodology. He evaluated companies across multiple factors: market presence, headcount, number of active or planned launches, funding stage (Series A, B, or C), and the professional backgrounds of the founding and leadership teams. He weighted these factors himself and produced a ranked list of private space companies.

Spotting an Early Signal

One company stood out as an interesting edge case. It had no significant launches, no large warehouse presence, and minimal coverage in public research. On raw numbers alone, it would not have made the list. But Jaswanth noticed a company blog post that described a vision closely aligned with Boom Supersonic's trajectory. More importantly, several team members had come from Skyroot, Boom, and Rolls-Royce Aerospace.

He ranked the company in the top 15 as a watch-list entry, not in the front runners, but on the list. His reasoning: the team pedigree gave the vision credibility that the current numbers did not yet reflect.

When he presented the list to leadership, he included his full reasoning for each ranking decision, not just the output. He made clear which companies were front runners based on consistent performance and which were watch-list entries based on early signals.