For years, Peter Platzer was pretty close to a stereotypical rocket scientist on Wall Street — he was trained as a high-energy physicist, but he spent most of his professional career in finance. But he told me he’s always had an interest in space exploration, and now he’s working on an aerospace startup called NanoSatisfi, which just raised $1.2 million in seed funding.

Platzer said he avoided the industry in the past because it was slow and government-dominated, with little innovation. It took an enormous amount of time and money to launch satellites, which meant that the technology on those satellites lagged behind what was available on the ground.