On a clear spring evening in Michigan, the stars aligned — just not in the way Upfront Ventures partner Nick Kim expected.

He’d just led a $9.5 million seed round for OurSky, a software platform for space observational data, and was eager to see what its telescope partner PlaneWave Instruments could do.

But when they rolled out the telescopes that night at PlaneWave’s manufacturing facility, he was stuck waiting.