Scott Morton’s heart rate spiked at the same time, every time.
Sitting in the flight control seat during SpaceX’s Starship launch tests, Morton wore a heart rate monitor on his wrist and thunderous responsibility on his shoulders. In that chair, he could override systems, take corrective action, and, if necessary, entirely abort the mission. What’s more, every rocket company is perennially just a couple rocket explosions from complete failure. As young as 27, Morton was making point-of-no-return decisions, with the chance to succeed spectacularly—or fail publicly.
“We’d always joke, ‘where did you freak out on console?’ For me, it was always t-minus one minute,” said Morton. “It was the realization that, of all the things I could do in my life, I’ve put myself in the situation where I’m about to have thousands of lines of code execute—and one character wrong means there’s just a crater left. You’ve blown up billions of dollars of hardware, and sent back the program years. And, everyone around you, all the work they’ve done, is just destroyed.”
Though Morton’s heartbeat would surge in those final seconds, he earned a nickname from his colleagues that suggested otherwise: “The Cali GC.” Though he’s from Wisconsin, Morton could find a remarkable amount of California chill in crushingly intense moments.
“It’s in that pressure cooker where you start to ask: What tools can help you be successful in that situation?” Morton told Fortune.
Morton left SpaceX in July after more than nine years, looking to answer that question. Six months ago, he founded Revel, a startup that builds software for controlling critical hardware. In short, software that prevents rockets and other large industrial entities from, well, exploding. “The whole mission of the company is to accelerate all the hardest things we do with software, and get companies through the testing campaign faster and more successfully,” Morton said.
Revel launches from stealth today with a total of $30 million in funding, Fortune can exclusively report. After the company’s seed round, led by Felicis and Abstract Ventures, Revel wasn’t necessarily looking to raise—but Thrive Capital came knocking, and a $23.1 million Series A prepared them for liftoff. (Figma’s Dylan Field, Earthrise Ventures, and Commodity Capital are among Revel’s other seed investors.)
Space may be the company’s starting point—Revel’s first customer is Impulse Space—but is not Morton’s ultimate (or only) destination.
"I don't think of this as investing in the space economy,” said Thrive partner Miles Grimshaw. “This is investing broadly in complex hardware systems that are manufacturing our lived environment. The next folks we work with will be far beyond just space. Obviously, it’s great that they began with space, which is one of the hardest test beds to start in while proving reliability and flexibility.”
Grimshaw pinpoints manufacturing, automotive, medical devices, and industrial automation as key areas for Revel moving forward. The goal is to create software that shores up the hardware underpinning our daily technological infrastructure. It’s a massive space (no pun intended), said Aydin Senkut, Felicis founder and managing partner.
“Innovation still drives a very small part of the economy,” Senkut told Fortune. “If you look at software it’s 10%, but looking at the rest of GDP—it’s big factories, wind turbines, huge objects that need to move, like for shipping. At the heart of it all is very, very large hardware that needs to be better controlled by software.”
In some ways, it’s a classic story, as Revel looks to serve industrial companies that have been using software from the 90s or earlier. The company has 11 employees right now, and makes software to control hardware, with a commanding interface, a live telemetry viewing system, and a programming language all its own.
The language is based on Python, so it remains easy to use but is said to be faster and safer—it's more likely to run without crashing and clearly shows which line is running in real-time. The result: Even non-engineers can follow along and respond to issues.
"People often think reliability begets no flexibility,” said Grimshaw. “But that’s the power of what Revel is creating…because you can have confidence."
There are competitors, like 39-year old Labview and existing engineer-focused programming languages. So, with the company launched, the race officially begins, along with the push into new industries.
“We’ve started with new space companies, but we’re already jumping beyond that,” said Morton. “We have interest from automotive companies, and are engaging with oil and gas…We’re starting to work with aviation companies, doing hypersonic stuff. Already, we’re branching out into this next phase.”
By starting Revel, Morton is once again in the control seat.
See you tomorrow,
Allie Garfinkle
X: @agarfinks
Email: alexandra.garfinkle@fortune.com
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