On December 8, 2014, Tim Kentley-Klay walked through the park-like gardens of a Silicon Valley venture capital firm known as DFJ, into a foyer filled with moon rocks, spacesuits and assorted parts of Apollo rockets. A folly of one of the partners, it is reputedly the largest private space collection in the United States and gives the place the slightly surreal feel of a sci-fi movie backlot.

Melbourne-born Kentley-Klay had only recently arrived in “the Valley”. He was on a tourist visa, moving between Airbnbs, and sneaking into a garage workspace at Stanford University without the right security pass. Now the 39-year-old was standing at one end of a long, tan coloured board table trying to convince a room full of hard-headed numbers people that he was going to change the world – and was going to do it in a field where he had no experience or qualifications whatsoever.