Lawrence H. Williams

Lawrence Williams is a technology executive with a unique combination of international experience in technology, regulation, strategy, and business. Lawrence has helped found numerous technology start-up ventures, successfully built organizations, completed private equity financing, and worked with two of the world’s greatest innovators and entrepreneurs, Elon Musk and Craig McCaw. In 2012, Lawrence founded Capture10, a business development and strategy firm that helps companies identify, pursue and capture new billion dollar markets within the technology and aerospace industry. The firm provides strategic guidance to clients on how to secure domestic and international government contracts through direct sales, distribution agreements, partnerships, shaping procurements and navigating regulatory processes. Lawrence most recently served as the Vice President for Strategic Relations for Space Exploration Technologies (“SpaceX”), which is developing a family of new, low-cost satellite launch vehicles. His responsibilities included developing SpaceX’s strategic relations, which included developing corporate partnerships and overseeing the company’s government affairs, marketing and communications. While at SpaceX, Lawrence has assisted the company’s efforts in expanding its revenue base from around $10 million to over $3.5 billion, specifically leading the effort of diversifying its customer base into NASA and the international market. His accomplishments included assisting in the completion of multiple multimillion dollar contracts with international customers, negotiating a major investment in an international satellite manufacturer and reversing a sole-source contract granted to a competitor, which ultimately resulted in SpaceX receiving a $278M competitively awarded contract to provide cargo services to the International Space Station. Most recently Lawrence led the effort to secure the financing for a $75M technology development agreement to transport astronauts to the International Space Station. Prior to SpaceX, Lawrence served as Senior Vice President for Business Development for the satellite communications company ICO Global Communications, a global communications company that is using satellite and terrestrial networks to deploy third-generation (3G) wireless services. Prior to ICO, Lawrence was a founding team member in charge of securing market access for Craig McCaw and Bill Gates’ “Internet in the Sky” system, Teledesic. As Vice President of International and Government Affairs, he led the team that secured the world’s first license to build, launch and operate a broadband low-Earth orbiting satellite system, and secured international approval at the International Telecommunication Union’s World Radio communication Conferences in 1995, 1997 and 2000. His government experience includes having served as a special assistant to the administrator of the U.S. National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA), a member of the Presidential transition team for the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, and a legislative assistant to U.S. Rep. Ray Thornton on the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology.