However Street Talk can reveal chief executive and co-founder Paul Bennetts has been forced to withdraw its application.

It is understood that, while APRA had not turned down Spaceship's application, the company decided it was best to pull its request before the regulator did.

The tech start-up model, where founders control everything, apparently fell foul of APRA's tough requirements for accountable oversight of funds. As well as being a significant shareholder and CEO, Bennetts has leading roles on all three of Spaceship's internal boards.

Unless it can return to APRA with an improved proposal, Spaceship is now left with the less compelling prospect of working to build up its range of managed funds, and targeting its remaining funds on its non-super products like the Spaceship Voyager investment app.

While it is way too early for the company to be raising the white flag, staff internally are known to be considering their future having watched as its super compliance team of eight were unceremoniously jettisoned after the super licence application was withdrawn about six weeks ago.

It comes after Spaceship had already run into trouble last year, copping a fine from the corporate regulator for false and misleading conduct around its marketing, which suggested it was carefully selecting all the most promising companies in its portfolio.

ASIC reasoned that, given the fund had 79 per cent of its assets in index-tracking funds that "involved no qualitative analysis of the underlying companies", Spaceship was tricking its young investors into believing it was choosing its investments.

Breaking into the orbit of the big super funds was always going to be a big challenge, but investors will now be growing increasingly concerned that, despite having well over $100 million funds under management, a licence-less Spaceship is still struggling for lift-off.

A Spaceship spokesman told Street Talk the licence application withdrawal "creates the capacity to recruit other people with the skills needed to help Spaceship Voyager grow".