Hi, I'm Christian Keil.

Pronounced "Kyle."

I’ve been at Astranis for the past five years. We’re a fast-scaling startup that builds small satellites for high orbits. I joined as employee #50, when we had a cardboard prototype, and we’ve now launched one satellite, sold ten more, and raised $550 million to connect the world.

I joined Astranis as a junior finance guy, and became Chief of Staff shortly thereafter. Over my four year term in the role, I seeded and scaled our business teams like recruiting, US Government sales, and more. I recently became the VP of External Relations, a "creative" title that describes someone who manages Regulatory Affairs, Government Relations, International Relations, Marketing, and PR.

Before Astranis, I spent 10 years learning. I learned about econ, psych, and stats at the University of Michigan; then business and telecom at Deloitte; then startups and engineering at UC Berkeley. In parallel, I wrote a book on religion and science, a few Medium articles, and a weekly Substack to capture and share what I was learning.
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Nowadays, I'm focused on helping people realize that the world is both understandable and malleable. Humanity needs more builders to solve the grand challenges ahead of us: maintaining peace, fixing the climate, ushering in AGI, exploring the stars. And now that I’ve learned how to build, I want to teach as many people as possible how it’s done — through First Principles, through Buildlist, through angel investments in startups, and beyond.

‍Bonus: I love Survivor, powerlifting, endurance sports, karaoke, Magic: the Gathering, Factorio, Twitter, and my adorable family. I have also tracked all of my reading since 2014. Enjoy!