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At 16, he dropped out of high school to found Shift4 Payments
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 ventured into the vacuum of space to test the company’s new spacesuits during the five-day Polaris Dawn mission. This marked the first time that nonprofessional astronauts from a private company performed a spacewalk.
“I decided I was going to go to space when I was 5 [years old]. I was pretty calculated about it at that point, it just took me a little while to get it into motion,” Isaacman told CNBC Make It in 2021.
Isaacman’s entrepreneurial spirit was evident from a young age. At 16, he dropped out of high school to found Shift4 Payments, a payment processing company. Despite facing initial challenges, his company quickly gained traction and became a leader in the industry.
To start his entrepreneurial journey, he used a $10,000 check from his grandfather as seed money and set up shop in his childhood home’s basement. “$10,000, you know, you needed to build a couple of computers,” Isaacman said. “That wasn’t expensive. And, you needed some phones, and that was enough to get you going.”
He shared with 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 dad, a salesman who had previously worked for a home security company.
His company has a market value of $7.4 billion and now has 2,000 employees across the country.
“There’s just no way, at that age, you could ever imagine” the company becoming worth billions of dollars, said Isaacman. “One of the best times at a startup is when you’ve got the eight people in the basement eating Chinese food and everybody kind of shares knowledge, and you share in your successes and failures together, and you learn together.”
Shift4’s success propelled Isaacman to 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 a record for the longest civilian spaceflight.
In 2009, Isaacman set a world record by flying a Cessna Citation CJ2 around the world in just under 62 hours- nearly 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 the investment firm Blackstone Group for “a nine-figure sum,” as reported by Forbes.
Isaacman’s passion for space exploration extends beyond his own personal achievements.
“As far as I’m concerned, I’m super lucky in life,” Isaacman told Bloomberg, ahead of the spacewalk. “You know – teenage basement startup, just trying to buy pizza on the weekend, and it’s turned into quite the empire.”
