SpaceX's secret weapon – Gwynne Shotwell’s role and impact
Just two weeks later she rejected Elon’s first offer, Shotwell joined SpaceX as the VP of Business Development, which was indeed a sales role. While numerous senior executives have left Musk since then, Shotwell stands resolute, earning her title as the unwavering stalwart of the company. Regarded as the company’s No. 2 executive, Gwynne is the driving force behind pushing the boundaries of the rocket company founded by Elon Musk.
Whenever Elon posts a tweet hinting at potential mishaps with a new SpaceX rocket, it’s Gwynne Shotwell who travels across the globe to reassure key business partners of the launch's seamless execution. Her unwavering commitment to Elon's vision of landing on Mars, coupled with her pragmatic approach, has solidified her position as the indispensable force driving SpaceX forward.
First of all, when Elon says something, you have to pause and not immediately blurt out, ‘Well, that’s impossible,’ or, ‘There’s no way we’re going to do that. I don’t know how.’ So you zip it, and you think about it, and you find ways to get that done [...] I always felt like my job was to take these ideas and kind of turn them into company goals, make them achievable, and kind of roll the company over from this steep slope, get it comfortable.
— Gwynne Shotwell
Gwynne possesses a rare talent for translating Elon's visionary aspirations into actionable, incremental strategies. She ingeniously harnesses SpaceX's technological prowess to construct profitable business frameworks that support longer-term projects and ambitious goals such as “carrying humans to Mars” – a concept she coins as ‘residual capability’, a term exemplified by groundbreaking initiatives like the Falcon 9 rocket.
It’s exactly this residual capability. So we developed the Merlin engine for the Falcon 1 launch vehicle. We could have tossed that engine and built an entirely new engine for the Falcon 9. It would have been called something different because Falcon 9 is nine Merlin engines, but instead of spending a billion dollars on a brand new engine, we put nine of them together on the back end of Falcon 9. Residual capability: glue three Falcon 9s together, and you have the largest operational rocket flying. And so it was expensive to do, but it was a much more efficient path than starting from scratch.
— Gwynne Shotwell during the 2018 TED talk
Today, some call Gwynne the ‘secret sauce’ behind the company’s extraordinary success, owing to her engineering expertise, business know-how, and connections in the industry, which have facilitated the landing of multiple lucrative contracts. Matt Desch, the CEO of satellite firm Iridium, a major SpaceX customer, contends that while Musk may be perceived as the foremost risk-taker at SpaceX, Shotwell stands as its linchpin for success. She orchestrates the deployment of personnel during launches, executes pivotal business decisions, and, according to Desch, acts as “the cleanup.”
Following the successful launch of the Falcon 1 into orbit on its fourth attempt in 2008, she negotiated a USD 1.6 billion contract with NASA for 12 cargo flights to the space station. Moreover, in 2013, Gwynne reportedly played a pivotal role in securing a 20-year lease of launchpad 39A at the Kennedy Space Center, a site previously utilized by the Apollo moon missions and other space shuttle flights.
Ultimately, since its establishment in 2002, SpaceX has evolved from a start-up with half a dozen employees to the second-largest NASA contractor and the second-most-valuable private company in the world.
Though she may not enjoy the same level of public recognition as her billionaire boss, Shotwell has earned a reputation in the aerospace sector as the composed leader of the most successful commercial rocket company in the world. Despite their apparent differences, Musk and Shotwell are propelled by a shared ambition, driving SpaceX's growth trajectory, with Gwynne's indispensable contributions matching those of the company's founder.