Gabe Dominocielo, co-founder of Umbra Space, discusses the challenges and excitement of launching SAR satellites and the unique capabilities of synthetic aperture radar. He shares insights into the process of developing satellites, the choice of SAR technology, and the importance of precision in radar imagery. Gabe also talks about the diverse range of customers, including governments, commercial industries, and even hobbyists, and the value of Umbra's Creative Commons licensing agreement. He emphasizes the collaborative nature of the market and the focus on solving customer problems. Umbra is a synthetic aperture radar (SAR) company that provides high-resolution satellite imagery.
The conversation covers various topics, including the challenges and opportunities in the SAR industry, the importance of communication and education, the potential risks of satellite attacks, the role of open data, and the impact of lower launch costs. The conversation also touches on the future of SAR technology and the need for continuous innovation. Umbra emphasizes its customer-driven approach and commitment to providing the best products and services at competitive prices.
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Visit Umbra: https://umbra.space/ https://twitter.com/umbraspace
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:13):
So, Gabe, I just I want to be respectful.
I don't want to butcher your last name.
So can you.
Can you help me out here?
Domino. Cello.
Domino. Cello. Okay. Perfect.
Awesome. Well, cool.
Gabe, it's great to meet you.
I appreciate you coming on and chatwith me, and I'm really looking forward
to learn more about umbraand synthetic aperture radar.
(00:36):
But more importantly, I just, I like to learn about you and understand,
you know, kind of how you got into this.
You know, when you, when you were growingup where you're like, oh, man, one day
I want toI want to learn to launch SAR satellites.
You know, like, how did you get into thiscrazy type of, industry?
I don't
think that that launching SARsatellites was anyone's childhood dream.
(00:57):
And as somebody who many.
I would not wish it on my worst enemy.
it is very, very difficult.
my background is.
I'm just.
I'm just a normal guy.
And my business partner, my co-founder,who is the CEO of umbra,
is a bona fide genius.
(01:19):
So, you know, growing up,
I think that if you,
you know, I had a I had a company before.
But if you start a company
with the smartest person,you know, it's probably a good decision.
And and I did.
And as it has worked out quite well,I think,
very cool, very cool.
So you talked about how difficult this.
(01:40):
So I wonder if you couldmaybe give us an idea of
when you say that you had some very,you know, strong emotion there.
Like what?
What made it so difficult?
And I can only imagine, you know,I'm sure there's a million things,
but it would be a couple of thingsthat stood out.
I think the thing islike what makes it easy?
And there's there's nothing easyabout inventing a time
(02:02):
like building it,raising money for it, launching it,
and then getting the product
to market and then fighting in the marketover, over.
You know, our data is very, very complex.
So it's really easy for peopleto not totally understand,
but I mean, there's not one
(02:23):
difficult thing about entrepreneurship,like being an entrepreneur.
I tell people not to do it all the time.
Right?
yeah, it is.
You know, we we started this business
nine years ago in our ninth year.
And a lot of the peoplewho started very similar businesses,
(02:44):
at the same time,their companies no longer exist.
They're doing something else.
it's been very sad to see
and, you know,we're we're very fortunate that
we invented somethingthat is unique enough that allows us to
thrive.
But it isnot such it is not the case for everybody.
(03:07):
So as you mentioned,
some of the challenges in the marketand and I do want to ask you about those,
but you also mentioned,you know, inventing a satellite.
So that to me sounds very interesting.
Like you said, not not fun, but like,how how do you even begin?
Like you just like you said,you have the the CEO, super smart.
Like,
(03:28):
how does this start?
Like, oh, let's launch a satellite.
You know, like,where does this idea come from?
Where, where,where does it go from concept.
And we're going to design this thing.
How how are you funding,
you know, this type of, project.
Like how how does that evenhow does that spark begin?
Well, so
(03:49):
my co-founder spent ten yearsworking at, in the industry.
So he was originally a political scienceand which became orbital ATK,
which then becameNorthrop Grumman Innovations.
so he had a
a really good sense of the architectureand what needed to be built.
(04:09):
And if you don't have thatlevel of insight,
you're really not going to be ableto build the right thing.
So you see a lot of like peoplefirst year
out of college or something like,I'm going to start a satellite business.
And yeah,and you don't understand the challenges
or even really what to build.
whereas David had insights on like,you know,
(04:32):
I think this would be really valuableif we did it in this way.
but we also have to invent something
that doesn't
exist because, like,what already exists is there.
So you need to.
And something that is much much better.
in order to have commercial traction
or traction with the government.
(04:54):
So, so what was it about SAR then.
Like what? Like why SAR and not
you know.
Yeah.
Hyperspectral or some other,
you know, infrared or whatever, whateversensor you can think of gravity, whatever.
You know, the and people love that,but they got like, why was synthetic
aperture radar the choice for umbra?
(05:18):
David had a lot of expertise in RF.
but I think that
we've looked at the market and the mainthing that we, we observed was that
at the time,space is really coming into its own.
They were doing
they maybe had not done, right, sure yet,but they were getting close
(05:40):
and the launch cost had come downsignificantly
and everyonewas just trying to go smaller.
And if you wanted to produce a product,we, you know, we've this 16
centimeter imagery, our next systemscan be significantly better.
You haveto look at the different phenomenology.
(06:00):
So optical is fine.
We all have optical sensors in our face.
so it's, phenomenology
that everyone's really familiar withbecause we all have eyes.
Radar can see through clouds.
You can see at night.
And as somebody who is looking at thisfrom the outside, it's like, well,
if we can make money 24 over seven,like at night
(06:23):
when people can't make money at night,maybe that's more interesting.
It just it gave us far more optionalityin generating revenue.
for something that is very image like,
and,
and that's we really fell in love with SARas a concept, as an ability.
So like, produce value for customers.
(06:46):
You just produce a lot of valuebecause it's
SAR on its very ownis a perfect measurement.
So radar is very precise.
And then radar imagery is also very,very precise.
So making sure that we had
a product that would be very
usefuland widely useful and easily obtainable.
(07:06):
it seemed like it made a lot of sense.
Yeah, it's it's really interestingthat you talk
about precisionbecause a of a military background.
Right.
And, you can say I grew up,you know, looking at SAR
data, stylizing sar
sar data, and Iand I never thought of it as precise.
It was like,
(07:26):
we'll use it if we have to, you know,if it's got cloud cover, if it's
if if, you know,there's something we really need to
track and understand and we,you know, for whatever reason or obscured,
you know,whatever we will pull on the SAR data.
but have you seen I find I find it,
I mean, yes, yes, and I want to get it.
(07:47):
I want to get into that, like.
Yeah, I want to get into thatbecause I'm just saying how
how I remember this from like, you know,this is 2000, the early 2000 and stuff.
Right?
So this is using
government based, SAR satellites.
Like my perspective then was, oh,
man, I'll never want to use thatunless we have absolutely have to
(08:10):
to maybe you can talk aboutlike where it's at now.
Like what? Like
why is SAR so useful now?
You mentioned cloud cover.I mean, that's a huge thing.
But you know what else about SAR makes it
the absolute right option for right now?
Well, I mean,
it's a complex phase history.
(08:30):
So I mean, I, I don't even knowfor your audience for, for bore away.
Oh, we got some smart people.
They wantthey want to hear it. Yeah. Yeah.
I mean, the beauty of SAR is the phased,
it's it's the measurement.
So it's
being able to understand distances,
(08:52):
being able to understandlike if you use interferometry,
you can see how a ground surface ismoving, what's happening under the ground.
Using Viper Ometer,you can look at a power line
and see if there's powermoving through it.
There's a lot of beautyin having that precision.
And then you can you can see powermoving through a power line.
(09:13):
You can see the closer you can seethe cat in there in the power line
which generates heat,which makes the power line
sag in such a way that you can rightretain.
Like how much power?
Or if it's on or off, you can see,oh, you have a generator
or like a large fanin an air conditioning unit, you could
you understand through the phaseif that is vibrating.
(09:34):
Same can be done with like a tractor.
It's it's a
really incredible toolif you know how to use it.
But for the guy at the gas station,
it's like, well, that'sjust like a black and white picture.
And if you're talking about radar sensorsfrom 2000,
it's like a really, really suckyblack and white picture.
If you look at this arc. Right?
(09:56):
Oh yeah, with a lot of noise,there's always be like just so much noise.
You know, you can tell what was what.
our,our extended dwell product on our website.
And this basically is like,were you getting
pretty close to, you know,
optical.
I'm the resolution is awesome.
(10:16):
Yeah. I like,
you know,every satellite relaunch is much better.
So, seven and eight just went up,have nine and ten going up and
probably 90 days, maybe less
a through vibe.
So I mean, they're going up soon and.
(10:37):
I'm like I can't believe it.
Like it's better than airplane.
Like it's because we would doairplane stuff to test.
We've seen a lot of plane data,which is much closer
to the Earth than five 50km.
And this is way better than anythingI've seen on an airplane.
It's it's impressive.
(10:59):
So. Yeah. So.
Okay, so you said you have seven and eightgoing up right now.
We have seven, eight on orbit. okay. Okay.
So it's and then we have,
two more going up in the next onecouple on.
What is that processlike for developing a new satellite?
I know you say it's hard, but like, what
we're we're we're it's very hard.
(11:21):
Like, where do you,where do you start saying, okay,
this is this is what we're doing now,but you know, how long does it take to get
one, you know, from back of the napkinto, you know, up in space
and like whatwhat does that process like for you?
Okay.
I mean, I can probably say this,
I think our longest lead time on partsfor eight months.
(11:46):
but then you have to integrate itand launch it.
The key isyou have to just build satellites on the.
Com like,you just it's a bet, you know, and
you have a good insightfrom your customers on what they will buy.
So, you know, we've beenI've been pretty stern in
that we're not going to launch satellitesunless we can sell the data from them.
(12:08):
I don't understand a business modelwhere you would launch a huge
constellation and not be able to sellthe data seems very, very stupid.
But yeah, currently everyone has done it.
So it's just launch now.
Figure it out later, I don't know. Yeah.
I mean, that might be the, you know,we've never been able to raise money
(12:30):
the same way that other people havebecause we're
you really have to understand the physics.
Like, why?
Like, why is Umbro better than anyone elseor like,
understanding that it's very difficult.
And if you have an MBA and you're like,well, they have X, Y and Z investor
and Umbro doesn'thave that investor, Sun Valley,
(12:51):
Silicon Valleypeople know what they're doing.
Oh, I see there's just an assumption.
Yeah. And
I mean but the proof is in the pudding.
I mean with,
like it's it's very obvious that we likethe clear financial winner.
Anyway.
So, so you mentioned a little bit about,
listening to customer demand, you know, when you're building the salads.
(13:15):
Well, whatwhat are the customers saying right now?
Like what?
What are the hot itemsthat they care about and who are I mean,
I, you know, I could probably take aguess who your main customers are.
who are your main customers then?
And I'll, I'll throw in another questionthere, which is, is the commercial market
actually starting to pick up or is it just
(13:37):
smoke and mirrors?
Okay.
I think
obviously, governmentsare our biggest customer.
and it is the
so look at a geospatial intelligencethe same that you would any other market
where the biggest buyers
are like large institutions, governments.
(14:00):
And then you have other smaller marketslike so we
we have the US government, whichwe have a very special relationship with.
And you know, obviouslywe're all American.
Our dollars are American. And
we have been very,
very careful about our cap tableand about like, people like company,
that are U.S government relations,very special relationship.
(14:23):
Then you have allied foreign governments
and allied foreign governmentslike think five eyes, you know, eight.
So, again we have to be very careful.
And then you have the commercial market,which is
again the largest people in it,
which is like oiland gas and critical infrastructure.
(14:45):
So those guys have the money to pay.
I mean, radar imagery, even ours,which is fairly inexpensive
relativeto others, with much higher data quality.
It's still really expensive, right?
You want
three images a day. It's $1 million here.
Like it's very.
Yeah, yeah.
(15:08):
and there's not a lot of
people can do that, but oil and gas,they need to be.
They have pretty razor thin margins.
They need to beon the cutting edge of data.
And, all these industries,
if you're not staying ahead in data,you'll get crushed by your competition.
So if you're not using radaras part of your,
(15:28):
you know, commercial package,
you're like your competitors areand they will destroy your business.
It is it is a matter of time.
The free market is the most savage thing.
ten.
I'll say politics is probably number one.
The free market is the politics.
politics is probably, you know,the free market will solve all problems
(15:52):
and politics will always get in the way.
absolutely.
that's a good way to put it.
what are some of those emerging use cases?
like, are you are you seeing,
more commercial buyers?
(16:13):
you know, in industriesthat surprise you or like,
you know,what are the some of those things that are
popping up there like, oh,that's interesting.
I didn't know, you know,Nike wanted to buy soccer imagery.
I'm not saying Nike does, but like, arethe are there any things like that
that are popping upnow that are a little bit surprising?
I think there's always,
you know, the trade like peopleare trading commodities and stuff.
(16:33):
They're always really
great.
It's just not obvious.
Everyone knows like count the carsin all the Walmart parking lots.
If there's more cars,there's or sales in the stock.
Sure.
but there's like mid-cap stocksthat people are going in looking at,
which are likethen you would just never guess, like,
(16:55):
oh, we're looking at crypto mine.
And I like crypto. My Jesus,
I think in this crypto mining,they're supposed to build this.
And if they haven't, if the factoryis done sooner then we'll know.
I'm like getting a satelliteimage is cheaper than having
somebody drive out thereand and look at the the production.
So I think there's a lot of,
(17:17):
you know, I, there's a chicken
man is my favorite, example for the guy
or his egg man do trade.
Okay.
Commodities, which I did not know existed.
And eggs theyget like, I don't know, a couple years
ago, like,they had a huge, like, went up, way up.
(17:38):
And that's like egg money making,like you're buying satellite imagery
to look at.
So they look at fences and radarlike just really well.
So it's like if you have like free rangechickens,
the fences are a certain size,there's a certain number of coops.
And so he could see the egg productionbased on the Mac coops
(17:59):
and the existence of the fence, fencesand chicken.
I was like,because he had a really nice watch on.
I was like,
I'm like, how are you making,like enough money for $100,000?
Watch doing egg like counting eggs, like,all right.
Makes so much money.
(18:20):
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, I mean, so.
Yeah, if you're not getting rich,everybody eats eggs.
You know, there's nobody that's like,oh, eggs are bad.
You know everybody.
It's it's like he's just he's a midwest guy.
It's like, if you can't make moneyusing information that is like,
I don't know what you're doing right?
(18:42):
So. So if you want to get into the egg
commodity market,you need to be buying umbra.
Sorry, inventory free delivery data.
As long as you tell me what the trade is,
whatever the trade is,
I got these eggs you want.
that's that's kind of interesting.
well, you mentionedyou guys are launching
(19:04):
some of the, the newer satellites, like.
And you said you're very excitedfor those.
What about those is exciting. Like what?
Like where where are you guys pushingthe boundaries with the technology?
That's that's leadingto leading you to be excited.
Everything is just so like it goes
like doing this for nine years.
Like the amount of informationthat we have learned over
(19:27):
the last nine years is incredible.
every time we launch a new satellite,we learn.
We learn more about our own capabilitiesand what the team is able to do.
And our team is extremely confident.
So we can put something in front of themlike, okay,
let's say we have X amount of power, Xamount of bandwidth
on of our antenna size,you know, size, weight, power.
(19:50):
These are very important things.
Like what if we made these changes,
because
we could improve the economicssignificantly because we understand
what our customers want moreand more with every launch.
So it's like if we make our fieldin regard longer or, you know, wider,
and we can take more picturesas we fly over a high demand area
(20:15):
like that, financial ROIbecomes really significant.
So you make
sometimes small changes.
So every single satellitetypically has some iteration.
And then it just gets better and better.
Like.
Eight, eight and nine are
well or eight with
(20:35):
seven and eightare way better than four and five
and nine is technically way better than
six and seven or whatever.
We're just going to get better.
So what I mean is like we want
to improve our power apertureby an order of magnitude.
every new
(20:56):
version of the satellite.
So, so it's theit has an increased power, increased,
our increased bandwidth increase,antenna size bigger, better,
while maintaining our unit economics,
which is critical.
The speed.
How about the speed of the datatransmission?
(21:18):
If you're using a better antenna,
does that increase the speedand how how much is that.
That's that's an on.
It's a non problem.
It's a non problem.
Yeah okay. Three ground stations.
We take pictures.
We downlink them okay.
That's interesting.
because it wasn't like thatwhen I was doing imagery analysis.
(21:39):
The optical satellitesthe optical imagery size is much larger.
So because optical sensorstend to just stay on
and just like some light,we have to produce our own light.
So we're tasked.
So if you need like that's a map of the Middle East,
you're not necessarilylooking at anything in particular.
(22:01):
You just leave iton, you get a whole bunch of data,
and then you downlink the dataand it's like constraint.
But with SAR it's like,I need these 25 pictures.
When you fly over Texas.
Right.
So that's pretty defined.
So we know what is needed.
Let me just make sure we have groundstations that can support it.
(22:23):
Well one
one obvious huge use casefor SAR is just scientific research.
you also mentioned that,you know, it's kind of cost prohibitive.
yeah.
Three images a day for years, $1 million.
a lot of times academicsdon't have access to that type of capital.
unless they win some giant grant from,the federal government or something.
(22:45):
I mean, we're on the NASA,the $500 million NASA deal.
Okay, well, maybe you could tell mea little bit about that.
What's the what's that dealthat NASA has some contract
for, like half billion dollars,which is getting,
like, archived datafrom a whole bunch of providers.
Everyone's other questions on it.
but for us, you know,
(23:07):
for scientific research and like, of,like,
penguins, walruses, like all the thingsthat, sure, people might like.
We give a lot of the data away for free.
we have an abundance of supply.
So our satellites take more picturesthan any other satellites in radar.
So with an abundance supply,you can lower prices, which we've done.
(23:30):
And then you can also expand the marketby providing data for free.
We have a program on Twitter whereyou literally fill out a Google form,
and we will just give you a free picture.
We don't care.
So we're not going to dolike mission architecture for you.
But like if you just if you wanta free picture house, you know, tweet us.
(23:51):
We'll take you we'll take a picturefor the first time they saw an emperor,
Emperor penguins like migrate was donewith an umbra picture.
And I'm pretty sure they didn't pay for.
I don't think we tried something.
So if you want a free umbra image,I'll put it.
How about.
How about you give me the link afterwards,we'll throw it in the description
(24:12):
and YouTube or tweet whatever,
whatever app you're using.
cool. We'll put we'll put that in there.
so our, you know,do you get a lot of interactions from,
from scientists and, and academicsthat are interested in using umbra
for different things?
And then what are those areas?
Well, I mean, you have like hobbyistswho like, it's a lot of people.
(24:38):
I'm not huge on the internet, but,
I do have a Twitter account with you
and I think, like, my co-founders, like,why would I put information?
I just like for people to,
that's good for that.
I have, I have a Twitter accountand there are hobbyists who like,
(25:00):
you like,
take pictures of launch sites,like rocket launch sites
and then use, like, archive data,or they will give them free
tasking for their like,their niche, fun, exciting, or even like,
Justin Myersdoes, just takes pictures of junkyards.
(25:21):
And I'm like, well, that's a lot longerthan let's see what it looks like in SA.
So you really need to be having fun.
I mean, we,
we had a series of volcanoes for takingpictures of a bunch of volcanoes.
and the volcano people loved it.
I think that
we, we have to support the ecosystemand with an abundance supply.
I don't know why we wouldn't.
(25:44):
That's awesome.
I you know, I'm building a of a new officethat I opened up
and, Starkville, Mississippi.
And I'm going to rap
like it's got windows on the outsideis going to wrap it in some type of
SAR imagery or something like that,I think.
Right.
So now I'm going to ordersomething on umbra.
I'm going to go Twitch location.
I like to capturea cool image in my office.
(26:07):
So I have
if you can see,I have Gigafactory as one.
Damn the pyramids.
They're beautiful works of art.
But, I would say cool.
You know, the real revolution of
umbra is something very boring,which is our licensing.
We use,
which I think is a total revolution.
(26:30):
Like, use a Creative Commons license.
So for a customer,typically there's really,
really constrained licenseswhere it's like, if you task.
Right, like you can't if you share itwith your mom, you get sued with us.
We're like to put it on the internet.
It's like it is affect like we arelicensing to you, but it's your image.
(26:51):
Put it on a coffee cup,wrap your building in it.
We're not going to charge you more.
We want the data proliferated.
Is that because they don't want you toresell it to somebody else that wants us?
Is that the entire reason? Resell it.
We just like we don't need the $500.
Like it's fine, right? Right.
I didn't know that that was the case,
(27:12):
that they had these strict I mean, I knowand so there's definitely restrictions.
We work with a lot of,
imagery companies, but,
no you couldn't.
It's that move it around.
I mean, you go, go and read the userexcrement for the satellite providers.
It was by far.
You know, I won't be doing that,but you can summarize.
(27:34):
Well, I don't think I've ever yetread one of those things.
User license agreement.
That's just me in the dark.
our our biggest customer
complaint before launchingthis album is the licenses.
And we really took it out like,we were like,
we need to give people like, how do youcreate value for your customers?
(27:56):
You give them data. They can actually is.
And so the our license is somethingI'm really, really proud of.
I mean, look, taking the highestresolution commercial image
from space, like all these thingslike launching a bunch of satellites,
there's a lot of like big wins.
But in terms of like actuallyhelping people make money,
like, if
I'm not helping my customer make money,
(28:17):
there's no business.
there's our our license has been really,really pivotal.
And I don't know whyother people don't adopt it.
They should.
Well, and I was even thinking from like,a federal government perspective,
you know,if the license is too restrictive,
let's say the U.S governmentbuys an image.
Well, there might be 20 different agenciesthat need that image, right?
(28:41):
And there's
you can't tweet right.
You can't tweet it.
There's like if there's a tornado,
like why would you not have NOAA taskand Umbra image
and then put a picture of the damageon the internet.
Right.
And it's just not allowed withinlike essentially any other provider.
(29:01):
That's that's pretty interesting.
And they just had thosemassive tornadoes in Nebraska.
So that was a lot of that.
Those things are those things are crazy.
So you mentioned some of the
the challenges in the market as well,like dealing with competitors.
you know, can you maybe talk
about the competition in the marketand are you seeing more competition?
(29:22):
and then like, where's where'sthe fight at in the, in that market?
What I mean is, is it, you know,is it on the licensing agreement,
is it on the pricingor is it simply getting in
with certain customers, like we're like,where is that?
I'd say that we're.
There's not I don't know how
(29:44):
our data is better.
Like the, the nautical insignia or not.
The Christmas the data is better,pricing is better.
I don't know that,but the pie is really big,
so we're not, like, fighting.
Like,I was talking to, CEO another great.
(30:05):
Our company.
It's like,what are you winning that we're not
like we both win the same contracts,right?
It's not really competing like,we have this, like,
similar product, but, like, we both win.
So, you know,
why wouldn't we want to work togetherand be positive for our customer?
(30:26):
and so I don't think it's,it's not whatever retail.
We're not selling Nike's or it'snothing against Adidas.
Right, right.
There's,
all the customers are known.
You're essentiallyjust trying to solve problems.
And it's like, what's the best wayto solve a problem for your customer is
if it's not buying our data,then we'll refer you to somebody else.
(30:50):
we're happy to do it.
So I don't think it's it's not competitivein the same way that people think.
Okay, well, I,
I see there's a lot of companiesthat have soccer, right.
There's, there's, you know, not one.
What's that?
So okay,
so the question is like new companieswith star I'm not really seeing any new.
I think that the
(31:11):
the winners have been made. Right.
It's been nine years.
Like there's three of usis like the kind of the new entrants
and. I don't know how you would get funded
trying to compete with three organizations
raised $1 billion like, I don'tI don't know who would fund that.
(31:34):
You would have to be a
moron, especially when
it's seemingly unclear onwhat is happening.
So. Right.
There's not that I mean, it'sthe industry's very, very small.
Like maybe there's 5 or 6 constellationsthat aren't like Chinese or Russian
because we do can't trust.
(31:56):
That actually brings up a gooda good question in my mind.
Like.
Or do you worry about, you know, yeah.
This was happening a little bit ago where.
Yeah, there was rumors of Russians,you know,
putting missiles in thereand their satellite systems,
you know, is
(32:16):
is that something to worry about?
Is that an attack vector for them to,you know, take down, satellites?
Is that something you have insurance on?
And, like, how does thathow does that even work out?
I think the argument could be made.
It'd be much easier to screw up satellites
from Earththan scoring in them from space.
And if they're going after something,they're probably not going after us.
(32:41):
Probably
going after bigger, juicier targets.
So that's the whole thing is like,if you look at what
the US government's doing,they want a proliferated industrial base,
just like a lot of peoplebuilding a lot of things for space.
And then they want a disaggregatedarchitecture,
which is low for low cost, high quality,
(33:05):
sensors that are disaggregated. So
you're not you don't have all your eggsin one basket, essentially.
Like if it cost $10 millionto blow up a number of satellite number
satellite costs, a couple million dollars,like less than 10 million, right.
The bad guys lose will just launch more.
(33:26):
What they call that,
asymmetric warfare, right, I don't work.
I unfortunately, we're usually the UnitedStates is usually the ones that are
spending millions of dollars to shoot downthings that are thousands of dollars.
right.
Or more likely, it's, spending
thousands of dollars to shoot downthings that are useless and worthless.
(33:47):
Okay. so,
you know, you mentioned some of these,
You're saying everything's hard.
Everything's hard. Right? And that's good.
If you had a magic wand, though,and you could fix,
you know, 2 or 3 of these hard thingsand make them easier,
what would be those topthose top three things?
(34:10):
I think that it.
Probably has to do
with our ability to communicate.
So like,
it it is it is very hard to communicatewhat we are doing.
Like it's there's peopledon't want to understand it.
(34:31):
Like it is very hard to learn
and it's very hardto learn about something very complex.
and we may be is like many radarscientists
are just like, how do you not get it?
Like, how do you not get the difference?
Or how do you not understand the value?
well,I'll, I'll say this and, you know, and
(34:55):
even I've used for a long time.
So my company still uses, I don't totally understand it, you know,
and I'm sure, like, a smart scientistprobably gets it right intuitively.
But I would say in general,
like the geospatial intelligence market,whatever you call it, the space market,
we don't have,I think I just saw Neil deGrasse Tyson
(35:16):
doing something with Sky five,but we don't have like a really good
spokespersonthat can, like, articulate those things,
like a scientistthat can actually articulate
what's important about XYZ, z
technology within that giant realm.
so I don't, I don't I don't thinkthat's necessarily everybody's fault.
(35:37):
And I think people are interested like,I'll, I'll give you an example.
You know, we have a team of analystsand we do a lot of stuff with SAR.
Sometimes it's like Sentinel, you know,it's not necessarily like the hype.
You know,we do use umbra from time to time.
Usually it's funded through some typeof, government customer.
if we're lucky, we get, you know,we get umbra
imagery, data, I should say,
(35:59):
and there is a thirst
there to learn more about it,but it is kind of like it seems
it seems complex and there's like,maybe a barrier to entry somewhere.
And there where, you know,these are scientists.
Maybe they should have a YouTube channel.Do they have a YouTube channel?
You know, how do theyhow do we actually help people learn
more about it so that we can proliferatethe use cases so people
(36:22):
can actually take advantage of itso that the United States can stay ahead.
And and the talent pool, became,
and and be aheadin that way, you know, like,
so I was looking
at scientific papers on radar.
The Chinese have releasedthousands of scientific papers
(36:42):
on space based radar.
The United States has released,I think, 90.
Wow. So we like that's a real problem.
And our open data,
our open data, I think is anotherrevolution, much like our licensing.
So our open data is free.
(37:05):
we're taking, I think, somewherebetween 10 and 20 images
per day of the different locations,
just so that people can use itand they can use it, they can monetize it.
They understand that we do a lot of thingslike ports or,
arms or like all these different sectors.
(37:26):
So essentially all we can do isgo to a customer and be like, okay, you're
looking at farms, here's a bunch of farmfree farm data, monetize it,
demonstrate a
use to your customer,and then buy the data.
So I think that the key there
to the do they know how to do that.
(37:47):
Like if I were toif I were to take what you said
and bring it like next door to me,I have a team of image analysts.
Right. I said monetize this.
They wouldn't know how to do that.
I don't like doing.
But yeah,I mean, you have a very good point.
It's like, look, are we going to have thisour education center for excellence?
Gosh, I hope so.
But I think might is likeif I put radar data
(38:11):
in front of college students for free,
we are 100 steps closer
to widely for knowledge.
And I think our open datacertainly is a an option.
Right.
Like you're providing optionalityto the market that did not ever exist
(38:31):
before, knowing no one has ever gotten
huge radar data sets for free from space.
I remember when we first started,
we bought a textbook with a CD-Rom
that had a single sample image on,
like from that to
I think we've released $4 millionat our prices, which probably would be
(38:53):
the equivalent of $40 millionfrom like a prime, like an Airbus.
is is such a step forward
that just did not exist before.
So if you're interested in syntheticaperture radar, you need to go to umbra.
Was umbra that space? Right? We're not.
That's to be confused with,
(39:14):
the other companythat pops up when you Google umbra. Yes.
Which is the modern home and decor.
just to make sure it's not modern homedecor, it's
definitely the one related to space and,radar
imagery.
I mean, I just find what you're doing
super interesting, you know, like, it's
(39:38):
launching, like, launchingsomething in the space, you know, and then
there's a very small pool of peoplethat really understand it
at a in depth level,like you're talking about.
And from a businessas an entrepreneur myself
and a business person,I'm thinking, man, that's risky.
You know? Man, that's risky.
what do you thinkare the biggest opportunities
in there, for you that maybe you guyshaven't tapped into yet?
(40:01):
Like what'swhat's what's next in the market space?
that you're like, maybe that might be something, you know,
so we do futureany kind of analysis on our own.
okay.
Which is because we don't want to havea channel conflict with our customers.
But I sure in this demonstratedby many providers who are like,
oh, what are you looking at?
(40:22):
Maybe I can make money from that.
I think it's a very negative wayto run and run a business.
so the answer is like,what cool idea can an analytics company
come up with and how can we help themin the way we can help them?
Is an open license free data.
You know, you need to start enablingyour customers to make money themselves,
(40:45):
rather than tryingto steal from them or or,
you know, we just it is so importantto be a positive player in the market
where everyone is like,well, we like the other guys.
They're not going to screw us.
I think that's the way all providersshould do that.
at that point, you'reyou're more of a partner
(41:05):
with that analytics providerbecause ultimately they're providing,
an answer to an end customerwho's paying for it.
Right?
And in turn, getting paid.
So partnerships are a big area.
are there any other I mean, howwould you ever have a successful business
if your customers could trust you?
Right?
(41:25):
This doesn't work. Yeah.
it simply doesn't work.
well, I'll I'll I'll take that back.
Only only in the government
contracting space can you have zero trust,
and your business do just finebecause these contracts get awarded there.
Fixed. You have something, and I can't.
(41:45):
It's immovable, you know, Bob knowsFred at the office, and they've.
They went to,
you know, junior high together orthey were served in the military together.
And, you know, that relationship's great,but the rest of the company is crap.
So they're going to win anyways, right?
I would say only in the governmentspace is what you're saying.
not true, unfortunately.
(42:07):
But for the rest of it,
for the rest of it.
So what you're saying is true,but everyone is tired.
They're everyone.
Everyone is tired of it.
The the the antibodies to
everybody is just sick of it.
And you're seeing
(42:28):
the industry very, very slowly evolve.
And, you know,there was a big announcement
with Andrew winning that billion dollar,
jet contract.
Yeah.
It never happenedfive years ago would have never happened.
Well it didn't happen.
Well also Boeing just won or Boing
Boing lost a big, contract
(42:51):
to, Sierra Nevada to do, like,
you know, up the sector planeand a bunch of other aircraft,
$13 billion contract and Sierra Nevada,that's not a household name.
Everybody knows Boeing, right?
But Sierra Nevada, you know, that'sthat's interesting that they have that.
And then Anduril popping up obviouslysome of these other kind of new tech
(43:14):
tech focused, just like not.
Yeah.
You I mean, well,I don't want to criticize Boeing, but,
you know, you're just not getting.
How do you deliver the best valueto the taxpayer?
And clearlyit is not some of these organizations
who are just like spending$1 billion on a fighter jet
(43:37):
that does not fly in the rainlike that doesn't make sense anymore.
Right?
And like I say, the free market solvesall problems.
Government is not the free market.
And you have a lot of this,like crony ism that maybe exists.
People are sick and tired of itbecause it's
it's well, it's unfair,but now it's becoming dangerous.
(43:59):
Like it's becoming dangerous to the pointwhere like, right,
we need to evolve our military to points
like fight with gigantic nation statesthat don't have this.
And maybe they have it
and it's their corruption is so efficientthat they're very efficient corruption.
Yeah.
But like, we, But these companies are capable, like,
(44:21):
every single prime,every single government person was like
you, you're you're putting a hinge onantenna that's never going to work.
Like, there's no like there's
there's ratchetsand it's going to move and blah, blah.
And I'm like, you have a hinge on a door,like, what are you talking, a hinge?
That's not a big that'sthat's not a big lift.
(44:41):
And then suddenly they're like,this is never going to work.
We find we found a group of investorsthat said hinge could probably work like
it's this free, asymmetrical bent likethe hinge works for the best thing. And
best thing since sliced bread.
We'll take the back.
And why is why is that a big deal?
The hinge on the antenna.
(45:03):
Like, can you explain that?
like, so we have, antenna that folds out
so right here, it's like,looks like a little cat.
And then so our launch cost is very,very low.
Like,
I don't probably can't afford it,but it's like, sure.
Not more than $1 million.
(45:24):
So then it goes up.
And so the whole thing is we're competingwith these large legacy
satellites that are gigantic.
And our antenna deploys to it like 3.8.
I mean, I think it's
the ones that we have in space, probably3.8 or 4m.
so they're huge.
(45:44):
And if they're circular, it's r squared.
So we have the same surfacearea of like a school bus.
Okay.
And that allows us to likewhen we send an impulse down
bounces off Earth, and then we havea really, really big way to receive it,
which is why our dataso crisp relative to anybody else's.
So so is the hinge just allowsthat expansion.
(46:07):
Like kind of it's like almostlike a closed flower and then open floor.
Okay. It's like that makes sense.
Does not seem like makes sense,does not seem like a big innovation.
But nine years agodid you patent the hinge?
We did.
See this is a big innovation.
Yeah.
You know, as long as you got a patent,their first patent,
(46:28):
on something like thatin like 20 years. Wow.
And so,
we we talked about some of the
mean. I feel like the.
Yeah, if you probably sit here all dayand just talk about
what's happening in the governmentand this,
you know, are they are they, largestcustomer, the US government,
(46:50):
I mean, just make an assumption,but that's not the case.
The US government is a large part of our.
It's got it, got it.
well, you know, it is what it is.
but it's a special relationship, right?
I mean,
I think that we probably don't have that,but for us, it is a really, really.
(47:12):
We did it, you know?
David.
Look, I have a, come and take it thingon my wall, like,
we're, And I'm bringing big American flagnext to it.
So, like.
We are patriots.
We love this country.
and we want to delivervalue to the country.
And, look, government is in many casesnot the easiest customer
(47:33):
and in some cases, the best customer.
Right.
And we want to support them.
And I believe they want to support us.
Or are there any other SARcompanies that are U.S based?
Yeah, okay.
I wasn't I wasn't tracking okay.
They're not here.So you don't have to name drop them.
(47:54):
okay.
Very very good I wasn't sure.
I thought you guys weremaybe the only one.
I know a lot of thea lot of the SAR companies are foreign.
that's. Or maybe.
Yeah, there's only two in the United.
Okay, okay.
well, yeah.
You're right. There's.That's not a big pool to compete with.
(48:15):
are you guysalways going to stick with SAR,
or are there other technologiesthat are like that we should launch?
you know, some other type of sensor,you know, or,
Sigint sensor or whatever, like,is there anything there
or are you guys always strictlygoing to focus on what SaaS providing
(48:37):
or are there are there other thingsyou could maybe throw on the same?
And I'm talking about this like an idiot.
I don't know anything about satellites.
is there any other sensorsthat you could throw on there
that maybe
empower SAR to be better, enableSAR to be more useful to that,
you know, guy tracking chicken, chicken,eggs or whatever.
(48:59):
So this goes to your first question.
Did I think that I would be,did I eat like, whatever as a kid,
a the founder of a synthetic apertureradar company?
The answer is now right.
But what is trueis that we will do anything
that produces the same profit marginas our radar business.
And so we've looked at other stuff,
(49:24):
and it is not to say that we wouldn't
do something else, but like the keep you.
I refuse to have a businessthat is not profitable.
I'm not doing it.
I, I there's a lot of these satelliteproviders are publicly traded.
I read their panels.
I'm not doing them.
I'm not doing it to make.
(49:46):
Like I'm not doing it.
So if we do somethingor if we pursue like mission solutions,
let's say where like we have one missionsolutions contracts.
one is publicly knownas like the DARPA contract for satellites
that are flying in concertwith one another.
that does all kinds of you have satellitesto fly close to one another.
(50:09):
You can do a lot of really fun things.
we will, especially SAR.
Right.
Because you can bounce the way thingsbounce off all kinds of things.
Okay.
Because it is okay. It's not like this.
They swapping selfies, though,you're saying, oh, look at this
okay, I seeI see what you guys are all about. yes.
(50:29):
It's it's a big selfie.
This is the the team on selfies.
Okay.
so yeah,we will pursue anything that makes money.
Okay.
That makes sense.
So our mission solutions businesswhere we're doing specific
like missions or constellations for sure
for ally governments or own government,is is a growing part of the business.
(50:51):
I don't know, like we yeah, we
we're not going to pursue somethinghaphazardly.
Everything that we have ever donehas been extremely deliberate.
And it's been deliberate because,you know, previously we're capital
constrained.
So it's like we didn'thave the money in the in.
(51:12):
So we launched our first two satellites,only having raised $12 million to build
them were like,that is not a lot of money.
Listen right.
so we had to come up with innovations
that allowed us to, like, generatelarge amounts of revenue, like
just because we make money now and justbecause we have access to more capital
(51:34):
doesn't mean that we're not going tobehave as scrappy as possible
if you got a scrap.
And if you if you solve problems withmoney and not technology, you will lose.
You will not have a businessbecause somebody else will do it.
Like I said, it's hard.
Like typically the right pathis the hardest path.
(51:56):
right.
And like as time goeson, like just starts being easy, like,
I mean, just buy these partsand not have to invent anything.
right.
Well, we have a lead, and, like,
maybe we just continue doing itand that's not acceptable.
We have to be ten times betterevery single year.
Every single part of the business.
(52:17):
Down from the peopleto the satellite systems.
We do not have choice.
And that's that's a good lesson
for almost any,any business or any human really.
Like,if it's easy, it's probably not the right.
It's not the right choice for you,especially for that.
That goes to a broken part of the system.
(52:38):
Investors do not invest in startups.
Investors.
Their main purpose is to raise funds.
And the way that they raise new fundsis our internal rate of return.
So you're you have now,
if you take anybody else's money,you have somebody on your cap table
whose incentive is to have a high IRR.
(53:02):
Sure, the fastest way to get a highIRR is to, in space,
get to space,take the first image, get a new round
IPO, whatever, as quickly as possible.
The quickest way to do something is to buy
like it is way harder.
Like essentially the threelike new entrants all start.
(53:25):
All three of us had the same ideaat the same time.
We were the last to get to space
because we took a much, much harder path
where we are in invent stuffthat we haven't been very handsome.
We have.
We had significant capital constraints.
but I think ultimately has turnedout well because, I mean,
(53:48):
the common
represents a large portionof the shareholder group.
I think it's an
in terms of like,
like healthiness of the company.
I think we're by far the biggest just
but it's been way harder.
I would not recommend.
(54:09):
well, you'reyou're out there in Austin, Texas,
which is actually, you know,
kind of a, an emerging space
market, I guess you could say,it's come out of nowhere.
I guess you'd say everyone.
Houston was always the space,the space city.
Right?
(54:29):
what what changes have there been in
maybe with some of the stuffthat Elon Musk is doing with
the reusable rockets like, or are there
things that are reducing these costs,like you mentioned, about $1 million?
I'm sure that used to cost a lot more,to, to hitch a ride to space.
are you seeing some of those costsgo down on those, those types of things?
(54:50):
Now that you have,you have at least SpaceX.
But then, is in Blue Originworking on kind of the same thing.
I don't know if they're feasible yetor where they're at, but
are those costs going down? And then,
are you able
to take advantage of that to help,like you mentioned, are all about profit
and margin, you know, soI'm thinking about how do we reduce costs,
(55:13):
where those where those cost savingscome in.
So to on SpaceX,we go to the website to launch
a 150kg cost a million.
Okay.
when we started,
maybe costs like 5 million,
Starship to launch our satellite,
(55:34):
it would cost $1,200.
No. That's insane.
That's that's wild.
Holy moly.
That's that's huge.
So that I mean, that's an interesting.
But I mean, I can't even fathomthat this is what I mean by like,
if you are not innovatingand you are not staying in the cutting
(55:54):
edge, you are not scared you will fail.
Like, well, in in your instance,you get to, you get to,
Kind of ride this
wave of, of innovationthat's happening in rocketry, right?
I mean, you guys aren't buildingrockets, you're building satellites,
which help reduce
(56:17):
will reduce your costs.
sounds like significantly,but wouldn't that also create
or lower the barrier to entryto do what you're doing?
And then so in water.
So what are you doing to prepare for that.
Because it sounds like,you know, obviously there's still a ways
to go before that's a viable rocket.
they're probably getting pretty close.
(56:39):
I wouldn't bet against,
no, you won't catch mebetting against them at all.
you know,there will be a flood of of new companies
getting into the game.
if that's the cost.
I mean, $1,200.
I mean, that's peanuts, you know,
(57:01):
so now so now it's going to the focusturns instead of the launch costs you
the focus.
And I'm just guessing herethe focus becomes making that satellite
as good as humanly possible, ormaybe getting more satellites up faster.
you know,getting rid of some of the old crap
and just getting the newest, hottest,latest stuff in there.
(57:24):
Like, you tell me, like, how does,how are you thinking through that?
Well, I mean, I would I,
I a turnaround in,in some ways like I wouldn't,
I wouldn't compete
against a company with the best technologyand essentially unlimited resources
whose costs are going down and then start
(57:45):
beginning like,
I don't know that SAis going to turn into this,
like even optical hasn't turned into this,like huge thing with like 100 companies.
I mean, SA specifically is fairly niche,
but what this lower barrierto entry does is creates,
it creates far
(58:06):
more opportunities for methan it does for anyone else.
But, because we have an abundance of resources,
we also there's a lot in the culturewhere you have founders
who still run the companywith a lot of equity.
So you have other companies where are the
founders are goneand have matured past it or the founder?
(58:26):
Equity is so low that it just
it's like there's just like fi
just trying to get through it.
when you, when you have that,
that you knowmy behavior is not like some hired
CEO, David'sbehavior is not like some hired CEO.
Like right.
(58:47):
This is our company.
Like we are very like
we force innovation
like David is still
driving brilliant designs.
and now he's gone
from highly competent geniusto totally lethal
because now he has unlimitedresources of knowledge. So
(59:11):
yes, a lower barrier to entry
is good generally for the market,generally for everything.
The entire ecosystem means that you candeploy and test products much, much faster
and allows larger companiesto adopt new products much faster.
but I don't I don't see
building and launching a constellation as
(59:33):
something that anyone want to
reverse.
They might notthey might not want to do it.
But but I think even in this podcastright here, you have said
that there's only two SA companiesin the United States.
I mean, it's just going to happen, right?
Like there will be more SA companies,people, people are motivated by money.
And we talked about theyou know, federal government corruption.
(59:56):
I guarantee you there's going to be people
with connectionsand a few dollars in their pocket.
And they're they're going to wantto launch these new these new companies.
Now, you said you're innovating.
You have the resources you're pushing.
I'm just I'mjust trying to be realistic about,
you know,there is an opening in the market
if you're saying there'sonly two companies in the United States,
(01:00:19):
there will be more.
I mean, they're just there has to be.
There's no there's no choice.
that's that's the free market, right?
It's it's going to proliferateif the cost is that cheap, $1,200.
I mean, I heard anybodythink I heard the same thing at two point
am I heard the same thing in a million
or so.
Only two.
I and I think that it's maybe other peopleare smarter than us and just like
(01:00:45):
but but there's a big differencebetween $1 million, right?
$1 million even even still to the averagethe average person seems.
I'll still still probably so. No, no.
Yeah.
Like the cost when we started to launch,
any satellite for rideshare was like $100million.
Yeah.
And brought the price by 99%.
(01:01:07):
And again,they're going to drop the price by 99%.
I'm not saying that there isn't
more opportunity or lower barrier.
I'm saying isit is going to be nearly impossible
to be competitive with like,
all the best peopleworking at the same kind of company.
So like, yes, there'll be new stuff,but it'll be more niche.
(01:01:30):
I don't see it as like
a direct competitor.
And and that's what I saidearlier is like I said, the other key,
we're winning things together.
Like it's not
it's not winner for now.
For now I'm
saying yeah,yeah I know and and who knows.
(01:01:51):
hopefully they
I hope they keep buying more, more databecause, we certainly love to use it.
well, I mean, hopefully the marketdoes continue to expand and that helps.
You know, I've watched the guyswatch the market like the,
I have a pretty good sensethe revenue of all the companies.
(01:02:11):
It's going up forever.
Like the rising tide is, is rising.
Everybody up. It is great.
This is so I don't know that a new entrant
who has a new productthat gets people interested in radar,
that whatever made their their product
does time travel or whatever it is,this is time travel.
(01:02:32):
Sorry, time travel a decade.
Yeah.
they might go find
a fun game and, yeah, 12 yearold Gabe and take care of him, you know?
but but you also have at that cost, too.
You might have companiesthat are already in space and, and
and have other systems say, oh, well,maybe it's so cheap to launch now.
Maybe we just focus on building outmore, more sensor types,
(01:02:55):
getting more of those up,you know, like the,
you know, all the all the big names andsay so yeah, I think it's very attractive.
I, I yeah, I just,I don't think that expanding the market
is going to in any way be negative for us,especially when we continually
have had the best productto service and lowest cost.
So like if that's something.
(01:03:17):
So if there's lower barrier to entryor something
that somebody with no resourcescan take advantage of, it's something that
somebody with tremendous resourcesalso can take advantage.
Sure. And I wouldn't want to just I mean,
other than somebody like like
I wouldn't want to discourage somebodyfrom not starting a sorry company.
but only do it if you're preparedbecause it's very difficult, very hard.
(01:03:40):
It's very hard and it's probably soulsucking at times and late nights
and all that good stuff.
well.
Very good, very good.
So how do people find, umbra?
and what would you like, everyoneto know about what you guys are doing
besides all the cool stuff you'vealready told us about, so you can find us
(01:04:03):
at umbra, Space.com, or, dot space.
we have we're we're active on Twitter.
We're releasing a lot of really coolimagery every day on Twitter.
I have a Twitter that I sometimes use,but if I do use it, I'm very helpful.
But I think that the and myis my last name.
It's at sign. My last name.
(01:04:25):
But I think the main takeaway is that
umbra would not existif it wasn't for our customers.
Like we are a customer driven company,we want to make sure that our customers
get the best products, the lowest prices,even if it's not from us.
we're here to make sure that, like
the people in the industry,people like you can make a lot of money,
(01:04:47):
like providegreat lives for their families.
and we're not going to be successfulunless you're successful.
Well, very good. And I'm all about it.
I'll definitely,task at umbra satellite here very soon.
it's like,
and we we love using, umbrawhen we get a chance to use it.
So I really appreciate your time
(01:05:07):
and coming on to chatabout what you guys are doing.
And hopefully we'llsee you around, in Orlando,
and we'll have a better place in Orlando.
I don't go to.
I don't know Orlando, but.
Okay. All right. Well, you should.
I've done more geofence than I,
I gotcha, I gotcha.
It's all good.
Oh. Very good. make sure you check out.
We'll put links in the descriptionto connect with umbra.
(01:05:30):
And maybe you should order your ownsatellite imagery.
Yeah.
And then also get us on Sky fi if you wanta really easy way to get an image.
yeah.
And we have our entire free archive
is, on Sky fi and on our website.
Very cool, very cool.
Well appreciate it. Good.
So, Gabe, I just I want to be respectful.
I don't want to butcher your last name.
So can you.
Can you help me out here?
Domino. Cello.
Domino. Cello. Okay. Perfect.
Awesome. Well, cool.
Gabe, it's great to meet you.
I appreciate you coming on and chatwith me, and I'm really looking forward
to learn more about umbraand synthetic aperture radar.
(00:36):
But more importantly, I just, I like to learn about you and understand,
you know, kind of how you got into this.
You know, when you, when you were growingup where you're like, oh, man, one day
I want toI want to learn to launch SAR satellites.
You know, like, how did you get into thiscrazy type of, industry?
I don't
think that that launching SARsatellites was anyone's childhood dream.
(00:57):
And as somebody who many.
I would not wish it on my worst enemy.
it is very, very difficult.
my background is.
I'm just.
I'm just a normal guy.
And my business partner, my co-founder,who is the CEO of umbra,
is a bona fide genius.
(01:19):
So, you know, growing up,
I think that if you,
you know, I had a I had a company before.
But if you start a company
with the smartest person,you know, it's probably a good decision.
And and I did.
And as it has worked out quite well,I think,
very cool, very cool.
So you talked about how difficult this.
(01:40):
So I wonder if you couldmaybe give us an idea of
when you say that you had some very,you know, strong emotion there.
Like what?
What made it so difficult?
And I can only imagine, you know,I'm sure there's a million things,
but it would be a couple of thingsthat stood out.
I think the thing islike what makes it easy?
And there's there's nothing easyabout inventing a time
(02:02):
like building it,raising money for it, launching it,
and then getting the product
to market and then fighting in the marketover, over.
You know, our data is very, very complex.
So it's really easy for peopleto not totally understand,
but I mean, there's not one
(02:23):
difficult thing about entrepreneurship,like being an entrepreneur.
I tell people not to do it all the time.
Right?
yeah, it is.
You know, we we started this business
nine years ago in our ninth year.
And a lot of the peoplewho started very similar businesses,
(02:44):
at the same time,their companies no longer exist.
They're doing something else.
it's been very sad to see
and, you know,we're we're very fortunate that
we invented somethingthat is unique enough that allows us to
thrive.
But it isnot such it is not the case for everybody.
(03:07):
So as you mentioned,
some of the challenges in the marketand and I do want to ask you about those,
but you also mentioned,you know, inventing a satellite.
So that to me sounds very interesting.
Like you said, not not fun, but like,how how do you even begin?
Like you just like you said,you have the the CEO, super smart.
Like,
(03:28):
how does this start?
Like, oh, let's launch a satellite.
You know, like,where does this idea come from?
Where, where,where does it go from concept.
And we're going to design this thing.
How how are you funding,
you know, this type of, project.
Like how how does that evenhow does that spark begin?
Well, so
(03:49):
my co-founder spent ten yearsworking at, in the industry.
So he was originally a political scienceand which became orbital ATK,
which then becameNorthrop Grumman Innovations.
so he had a
a really good sense of the architectureand what needed to be built.
(04:09):
And if you don't have thatlevel of insight,
you're really not going to be ableto build the right thing.
So you see a lot of like peoplefirst year
out of college or something like,I'm going to start a satellite business.
And yeah,and you don't understand the challenges
or even really what to build.
whereas David had insights on like,you know,
(04:32):
I think this would be really valuableif we did it in this way.
but we also have to invent something
that doesn't
exist because, like,what already exists is there.
So you need to.
And something that is much much better.
in order to have commercial traction
or traction with the government.
(04:54):
So, so what was it about SAR then.
Like what? Like why SAR and not
you know.
Yeah.
Hyperspectral or some other,
you know, infrared or whatever, whateversensor you can think of gravity, whatever.
You know, the and people love that,but they got like, why was synthetic
aperture radar the choice for umbra?
(05:18):
David had a lot of expertise in RF.
but I think that
we've looked at the market and the mainthing that we, we observed was that
at the time,space is really coming into its own.
They were doing
they maybe had not done, right, sure yet,but they were getting close
(05:40):
and the launch cost had come downsignificantly
and everyonewas just trying to go smaller.
And if you wanted to produce a product,we, you know, we've this 16
centimeter imagery, our next systemscan be significantly better.
You haveto look at the different phenomenology.
(06:00):
So optical is fine.
We all have optical sensors in our face.
so it's, phenomenology
that everyone's really familiar withbecause we all have eyes.
Radar can see through clouds.
You can see at night.
And as somebody who is looking at thisfrom the outside, it's like, well,
if we can make money 24 over seven,like at night
(06:23):
when people can't make money at night,maybe that's more interesting.
It just it gave us far more optionalityin generating revenue.
for something that is very image like,
and,
and that's we really fell in love with SARas a concept, as an ability.
So like, produce value for customers.
(06:46):
You just produce a lot of valuebecause it's
SAR on its very ownis a perfect measurement.
So radar is very precise.
And then radar imagery is also very,very precise.
So making sure that we had
a product that would be very
usefuland widely useful and easily obtainable.
(07:06):
it seemed like it made a lot of sense.
Yeah, it's it's really interestingthat you talk
about precisionbecause a of a military background.
Right.
And, you can say I grew up,you know, looking at SAR
data, stylizing sar
sar data, and Iand I never thought of it as precise.
It was like,
(07:26):
we'll use it if we have to, you know,if it's got cloud cover, if it's
if if, you know,there's something we really need to
track and understand and we,you know, for whatever reason or obscured,
you know,whatever we will pull on the SAR data.
but have you seen I find I find it,
I mean, yes, yes, and I want to get it.
(07:47):
I want to get into that, like.
Yeah, I want to get into thatbecause I'm just saying how
how I remember this from like, you know,this is 2000, the early 2000 and stuff.
Right?
So this is using
government based, SAR satellites.
Like my perspective then was, oh,
man, I'll never want to use thatunless we have absolutely have to
(08:10):
to maybe you can talk aboutlike where it's at now.
Like what? Like
why is SAR so useful now?
You mentioned cloud cover.I mean, that's a huge thing.
But you know what else about SAR makes it
the absolute right option for right now?
Well, I mean,
it's a complex phase history.
(08:30):
So I mean, I, I don't even knowfor your audience for, for bore away.
Oh, we got some smart people.
They wantthey want to hear it. Yeah. Yeah.
I mean, the beauty of SAR is the phased,
it's it's the measurement.
So it's
being able to understand distances,
(08:52):
being able to understandlike if you use interferometry,
you can see how a ground surface ismoving, what's happening under the ground.
Using Viper Ometer,you can look at a power line
and see if there's powermoving through it.
There's a lot of beautyin having that precision.
And then you can you can see powermoving through a power line.
(09:13):
You can see the closer you can seethe cat in there in the power line
which generates heat,which makes the power line
sag in such a way that you can rightretain.
Like how much power?
Or if it's on or off, you can see,oh, you have a generator
or like a large fanin an air conditioning unit, you could
you understand through the phaseif that is vibrating.
(09:34):
Same can be done with like a tractor.
It's it's a
really incredible toolif you know how to use it.
But for the guy at the gas station,
it's like, well, that'sjust like a black and white picture.
And if you're talking about radar sensorsfrom 2000,
it's like a really, really suckyblack and white picture.
If you look at this arc. Right?
(09:56):
Oh yeah, with a lot of noise,there's always be like just so much noise.
You know, you can tell what was what.
our,our extended dwell product on our website.
And this basically is like,were you getting
pretty close to, you know,
optical.
I'm the resolution is awesome.
(10:16):
Yeah. I like,
you know,every satellite relaunch is much better.
So, seven and eight just went up,have nine and ten going up and
probably 90 days, maybe less
a through vibe.
So I mean, they're going up soon and.
(10:37):
I'm like I can't believe it.
Like it's better than airplane.
Like it's because we would doairplane stuff to test.
We've seen a lot of plane data,which is much closer
to the Earth than five 50km.
And this is way better than anythingI've seen on an airplane.
It's it's impressive.
(10:59):
So. Yeah. So.
Okay, so you said you have seven and eightgoing up right now.
We have seven, eight on orbit. okay. Okay.
So it's and then we have,
two more going up in the next onecouple on.
What is that processlike for developing a new satellite?
I know you say it's hard, but like, what
we're we're we're it's very hard.
(11:21):
Like, where do you,where do you start saying, okay,
this is this is what we're doing now,but you know, how long does it take to get
one, you know, from back of the napkinto, you know, up in space
and like whatwhat does that process like for you?
Okay.
I mean, I can probably say this,
I think our longest lead time on partsfor eight months.
(11:46):
but then you have to integrate itand launch it.
The key isyou have to just build satellites on the.
Com like,you just it's a bet, you know, and
you have a good insightfrom your customers on what they will buy.
So, you know, we've beenI've been pretty stern in
that we're not going to launch satellitesunless we can sell the data from them.
(12:08):
I don't understand a business modelwhere you would launch a huge
constellation and not be able to sellthe data seems very, very stupid.
But yeah, currently everyone has done it.
So it's just launch now.
Figure it out later, I don't know. Yeah.
I mean, that might be the, you know,we've never been able to raise money
(12:30):
the same way that other people havebecause we're
you really have to understand the physics.
Like, why?
Like, why is Umbro better than anyone elseor like,
understanding that it's very difficult.
And if you have an MBA and you're like,well, they have X, Y and Z investor
and Umbro doesn'thave that investor, Sun Valley,
(12:51):
Silicon Valleypeople know what they're doing.
Oh, I see there's just an assumption.
Yeah. And
I mean but the proof is in the pudding.
I mean with,
like it's it's very obvious that we likethe clear financial winner.
Anyway.
So, so you mentioned a little bit about,
listening to customer demand, you know, when you're building the salads.
(13:15):
Well, whatwhat are the customers saying right now?
Like what?
What are the hot itemsthat they care about and who are I mean,
I, you know, I could probably take aguess who your main customers are.
who are your main customers then?
And I'll, I'll throw in another questionthere, which is, is the commercial market
actually starting to pick up or is it just
(13:37):
smoke and mirrors?
Okay.
I think
obviously, governmentsare our biggest customer.
and it is the
so look at a geospatial intelligencethe same that you would any other market
where the biggest buyers
are like large institutions, governments.
(14:00):
And then you have other smaller marketslike so we
we have the US government, whichwe have a very special relationship with.
And you know, obviouslywe're all American.
Our dollars are American. And
we have been very,
very careful about our cap tableand about like, people like company,
that are U.S government relations,very special relationship.
(14:23):
Then you have allied foreign governments
and allied foreign governmentslike think five eyes, you know, eight.
So, again we have to be very careful.
And then you have the commercial market,which is
again the largest people in it,
which is like oiland gas and critical infrastructure.
(14:45):
So those guys have the money to pay.
I mean, radar imagery, even ours,which is fairly inexpensive
relativeto others, with much higher data quality.
It's still really expensive, right?
You want
three images a day. It's $1 million here.
Like it's very.
Yeah, yeah.
(15:08):
and there's not a lot of
people can do that, but oil and gas,they need to be.
They have pretty razor thin margins.
They need to beon the cutting edge of data.
And, all these industries,
if you're not staying ahead in data,you'll get crushed by your competition.
So if you're not using radaras part of your,
(15:28):
you know, commercial package,
you're like your competitors areand they will destroy your business.
It is it is a matter of time.
The free market is the most savage thing.
ten.
I'll say politics is probably number one.
The free market is the politics.
politics is probably, you know,the free market will solve all problems
(15:52):
and politics will always get in the way.
absolutely.
that's a good way to put it.
what are some of those emerging use cases?
like, are you are you seeing,
more commercial buyers?
(16:13):
you know, in industriesthat surprise you or like,
you know,what are the some of those things that are
popping up there like, oh,that's interesting.
I didn't know, you know,Nike wanted to buy soccer imagery.
I'm not saying Nike does, but like, arethe are there any things like that
that are popping upnow that are a little bit surprising?
I think there's always,
you know, the trade like peopleare trading commodities and stuff.
(16:33):
They're always really
great.
It's just not obvious.
Everyone knows like count the carsin all the Walmart parking lots.
If there's more cars,there's or sales in the stock.
Sure.
but there's like mid-cap stocksthat people are going in looking at,
which are likethen you would just never guess, like,
(16:55):
oh, we're looking at crypto mine.
And I like crypto. My Jesus,
I think in this crypto mining,they're supposed to build this.
And if they haven't, if the factoryis done sooner then we'll know.
I'm like getting a satelliteimage is cheaper than having
somebody drive out thereand and look at the the production.
So I think there's a lot of,
(17:17):
you know, I, there's a chicken
man is my favorite, example for the guy
or his egg man do trade.
Okay.
Commodities, which I did not know existed.
And eggs theyget like, I don't know, a couple years
ago, like,they had a huge, like, went up, way up.
(17:38):
And that's like egg money making,like you're buying satellite imagery
to look at.
So they look at fences and radarlike just really well.
So it's like if you have like free rangechickens,
the fences are a certain size,there's a certain number of coops.
And so he could see the egg productionbased on the Mac coops
(17:59):
and the existence of the fence, fencesand chicken.
I was like,because he had a really nice watch on.
I was like,
I'm like, how are you making,like enough money for $100,000?
Watch doing egg like counting eggs, like,all right.
Makes so much money.
(18:20):
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, I mean, so.
Yeah, if you're not getting rich,everybody eats eggs.
You know, there's nobody that's like,oh, eggs are bad.
You know everybody.
It's it's like he's just he's a midwest guy.
It's like, if you can't make moneyusing information that is like,
I don't know what you're doing right?
(18:42):
So. So if you want to get into the egg
commodity market,you need to be buying umbra.
Sorry, inventory free delivery data.
As long as you tell me what the trade is,
whatever the trade is,
I got these eggs you want.
that's that's kind of interesting.
well, you mentionedyou guys are launching
(19:04):
some of the, the newer satellites, like.
And you said you're very excitedfor those.
What about those is exciting. Like what?
Like where where are you guys pushingthe boundaries with the technology?
That's that's leadingto leading you to be excited.
Everything is just so like it goes
like doing this for nine years.
Like the amount of informationthat we have learned over
(19:27):
the last nine years is incredible.
every time we launch a new satellite,we learn.
We learn more about our own capabilitiesand what the team is able to do.
And our team is extremely confident.
So we can put something in front of themlike, okay,
let's say we have X amount of power, Xamount of bandwidth
on of our antenna size,you know, size, weight, power.
(19:50):
These are very important things.
Like what if we made these changes,
because
we could improve the economicssignificantly because we understand
what our customers want moreand more with every launch.
So it's like if we make our fieldin regard longer or, you know, wider,
and we can take more picturesas we fly over a high demand area
(20:15):
like that, financial ROIbecomes really significant.
So you make
sometimes small changes.
So every single satellitetypically has some iteration.
And then it just gets better and better.
Like.
Eight, eight and nine are
well or eight with
(20:35):
seven and eightare way better than four and five
and nine is technically way better than
six and seven or whatever.
We're just going to get better.
So what I mean is like we want
to improve our power apertureby an order of magnitude.
every new
(20:56):
version of the satellite.
So, so it's theit has an increased power, increased,
our increased bandwidth increase,antenna size bigger, better,
while maintaining our unit economics,
which is critical.
The speed.
How about the speed of the datatransmission?
(21:18):
If you're using a better antenna,
does that increase the speedand how how much is that.
That's that's an on.
It's a non problem.
It's a non problem.
Yeah okay. Three ground stations.
We take pictures.
We downlink them okay.
That's interesting.
because it wasn't like thatwhen I was doing imagery analysis.
(21:39):
The optical satellitesthe optical imagery size is much larger.
So because optical sensorstend to just stay on
and just like some light,we have to produce our own light.
So we're tasked.
So if you need like that's a map of the Middle East,
you're not necessarilylooking at anything in particular.
(22:01):
You just leave iton, you get a whole bunch of data,
and then you downlink the dataand it's like constraint.
But with SAR it's like,I need these 25 pictures.
When you fly over Texas.
Right.
So that's pretty defined.
So we know what is needed.
Let me just make sure we have groundstations that can support it.
(22:23):
Well one
one obvious huge use casefor SAR is just scientific research.
you also mentioned that,you know, it's kind of cost prohibitive.
yeah.
Three images a day for years, $1 million.
a lot of times academicsdon't have access to that type of capital.
unless they win some giant grant from,the federal government or something.
(22:45):
I mean, we're on the NASA,the $500 million NASA deal.
Okay, well, maybe you could tell mea little bit about that.
What's the what's that dealthat NASA has some contract
for, like half billion dollars,which is getting,
like, archived datafrom a whole bunch of providers.
Everyone's other questions on it.
but for us, you know,
(23:07):
for scientific research and like, of,like,
penguins, walruses, like all the thingsthat, sure, people might like.
We give a lot of the data away for free.
we have an abundance of supply.
So our satellites take more picturesthan any other satellites in radar.
So with an abundance supply,you can lower prices, which we've done.
(23:30):
And then you can also expand the marketby providing data for free.
We have a program on Twitter whereyou literally fill out a Google form,
and we will just give you a free picture.
We don't care.
So we're not going to dolike mission architecture for you.
But like if you just if you wanta free picture house, you know, tweet us.
(23:51):
We'll take you we'll take a picturefor the first time they saw an emperor,
Emperor penguins like migrate was donewith an umbra picture.
And I'm pretty sure they didn't pay for.
I don't think we tried something.
So if you want a free umbra image,I'll put it.
How about.
How about you give me the link afterwards,we'll throw it in the description
(24:12):
and YouTube or tweet whatever,
whatever app you're using.
cool. We'll put we'll put that in there.
so our, you know,do you get a lot of interactions from,
from scientists and, and academicsthat are interested in using umbra
for different things?
And then what are those areas?
Well, I mean, you have like hobbyistswho like, it's a lot of people.
(24:38):
I'm not huge on the internet, but,
I do have a Twitter account with you
and I think, like, my co-founders, like,why would I put information?
I just like for people to,
that's good for that.
I have, I have a Twitter accountand there are hobbyists who like,
(25:00):
you like,
take pictures of launch sites,like rocket launch sites
and then use, like, archive data,or they will give them free
tasking for their like,their niche, fun, exciting, or even like,
Justin Myersdoes, just takes pictures of junkyards.
(25:21):
And I'm like, well, that's a lot longerthan let's see what it looks like in SA.
So you really need to be having fun.
I mean, we,
we had a series of volcanoes for takingpictures of a bunch of volcanoes.
and the volcano people loved it.
I think that
we, we have to support the ecosystemand with an abundance supply.
I don't know why we wouldn't.
(25:44):
That's awesome.
I you know, I'm building a of a new officethat I opened up
and, Starkville, Mississippi.
And I'm going to rap
like it's got windows on the outsideis going to wrap it in some type of
SAR imagery or something like that,I think.
Right.
So now I'm going to ordersomething on umbra.
I'm going to go Twitch location.
I like to capturea cool image in my office.
(26:07):
So I have
if you can see,I have Gigafactory as one.
Damn the pyramids.
They're beautiful works of art.
But, I would say cool.
You know, the real revolution of
umbra is something very boring,which is our licensing.
We use,
which I think is a total revolution.
(26:30):
Like, use a Creative Commons license.
So for a customer,typically there's really,
really constrained licenseswhere it's like, if you task.
Right, like you can't if you share itwith your mom, you get sued with us.
We're like to put it on the internet.
It's like it is affect like we arelicensing to you, but it's your image.
(26:51):
Put it on a coffee cup,wrap your building in it.
We're not going to charge you more.
We want the data proliferated.
Is that because they don't want you toresell it to somebody else that wants us?
Is that the entire reason? Resell it.
We just like we don't need the $500.
Like it's fine, right? Right.
I didn't know that that was the case,
(27:12):
that they had these strict I mean, I knowand so there's definitely restrictions.
We work with a lot of,
imagery companies, but,
no you couldn't.
It's that move it around.
I mean, you go, go and read the userexcrement for the satellite providers.
It was by far.
You know, I won't be doing that,but you can summarize.
(27:34):
Well, I don't think I've ever yetread one of those things.
User license agreement.
That's just me in the dark.
our our biggest customer
complaint before launchingthis album is the licenses.
And we really took it out like,we were like,
we need to give people like, how do youcreate value for your customers?
(27:56):
You give them data. They can actually is.
And so the our license is somethingI'm really, really proud of.
I mean, look, taking the highestresolution commercial image
from space, like all these thingslike launching a bunch of satellites,
there's a lot of like big wins.
But in terms of like actuallyhelping people make money,
like, if
I'm not helping my customer make money,
(28:17):
there's no business.
there's our our license has been really,really pivotal.
And I don't know whyother people don't adopt it.
They should.
Well, and I was even thinking from like,a federal government perspective,
you know,if the license is too restrictive,
let's say the U.S governmentbuys an image.
Well, there might be 20 different agenciesthat need that image, right?
(28:41):
And there's
you can't tweet right.
You can't tweet it.
There's like if there's a tornado,
like why would you not have NOAA taskand Umbra image
and then put a picture of the damageon the internet.
Right.
And it's just not allowed withinlike essentially any other provider.
(29:01):
That's that's pretty interesting.
And they just had thosemassive tornadoes in Nebraska.
So that was a lot of that.
Those things are those things are crazy.
So you mentioned some of the
the challenges in the market as well,like dealing with competitors.
you know, can you maybe talk
about the competition in the marketand are you seeing more competition?
(29:22):
and then like, where's where'sthe fight at in the, in that market?
What I mean is, is it, you know,is it on the licensing agreement,
is it on the pricingor is it simply getting in
with certain customers, like we're like,where is that?
I'd say that we're.
There's not I don't know how
(29:44):
our data is better.
Like the, the nautical insignia or not.
The Christmas the data is better,pricing is better.
I don't know that,but the pie is really big,
so we're not, like, fighting.
Like,I was talking to, CEO another great.
(30:05):
Our company.
It's like,what are you winning that we're not
like we both win the same contracts,right?
It's not really competing like,we have this, like,
similar product, but, like, we both win.
So, you know,
why wouldn't we want to work togetherand be positive for our customer?
(30:26):
and so I don't think it's,it's not whatever retail.
We're not selling Nike's or it'snothing against Adidas.
Right, right.
There's,
all the customers are known.
You're essentiallyjust trying to solve problems.
And it's like, what's the best wayto solve a problem for your customer is
if it's not buying our data,then we'll refer you to somebody else.
(30:50):
we're happy to do it.
So I don't think it's it's not competitivein the same way that people think.
Okay, well, I,
I see there's a lot of companiesthat have soccer, right.
There's, there's, you know, not one.
What's that?
So okay,
so the question is like new companieswith star I'm not really seeing any new.
I think that the
(31:11):
the winners have been made. Right.
It's been nine years.
Like there's three of usis like the kind of the new entrants
and. I don't know how you would get funded
trying to compete with three organizations
raised $1 billion like, I don'tI don't know who would fund that.
(31:34):
You would have to be a
moron, especially when
it's seemingly unclear onwhat is happening.
So. Right.
There's not that I mean, it'sthe industry's very, very small.
Like maybe there's 5 or 6 constellationsthat aren't like Chinese or Russian
because we do can't trust.
(31:56):
That actually brings up a gooda good question in my mind.
Like.
Or do you worry about, you know, yeah.
This was happening a little bit ago where.
Yeah, there was rumors of Russians,you know,
putting missiles in thereand their satellite systems,
you know, is
(32:16):
is that something to worry about?
Is that an attack vector for them to,you know, take down, satellites?
Is that something you have insurance on?
And, like, how does thathow does that even work out?
I think the argument could be made.
It'd be much easier to screw up satellites
from Earththan scoring in them from space.
And if they're going after something,they're probably not going after us.
(32:41):
Probably
going after bigger, juicier targets.
So that's the whole thing is like,if you look at what
the US government's doing,they want a proliferated industrial base,
just like a lot of peoplebuilding a lot of things for space.
And then they want a disaggregatedarchitecture,
which is low for low cost, high quality,
(33:05):
sensors that are disaggregated. So
you're not you don't have all your eggsin one basket, essentially.
Like if it cost $10 millionto blow up a number of satellite number
satellite costs, a couple million dollars,like less than 10 million, right.
The bad guys lose will just launch more.
(33:26):
What they call that,
asymmetric warfare, right, I don't work.
I unfortunately, we're usually the UnitedStates is usually the ones that are
spending millions of dollars to shoot downthings that are thousands of dollars.
right.
Or more likely, it's, spending
thousands of dollars to shoot downthings that are useless and worthless.
(33:47):
Okay. so,
you know, you mentioned some of these,
You're saying everything's hard.
Everything's hard. Right? And that's good.
If you had a magic wand, though,and you could fix,
you know, 2 or 3 of these hard thingsand make them easier,
what would be those topthose top three things?
(34:10):
I think that it.
Probably has to do
with our ability to communicate.
So like,
it it is it is very hard to communicatewhat we are doing.
Like it's there's peopledon't want to understand it.
(34:31):
Like it is very hard to learn
and it's very hardto learn about something very complex.
and we may be is like many radarscientists
are just like, how do you not get it?
Like, how do you not get the difference?
Or how do you not understand the value?
well,I'll, I'll say this and, you know, and
(34:55):
even I've used for a long time.
So my company still uses, I don't totally understand it, you know,
and I'm sure, like, a smart scientistprobably gets it right intuitively.
But I would say in general,
like the geospatial intelligence market,whatever you call it, the space market,
we don't have,I think I just saw Neil deGrasse Tyson
(35:16):
doing something with Sky five,but we don't have like a really good
spokespersonthat can, like, articulate those things,
like a scientistthat can actually articulate
what's important about XYZ, z
technology within that giant realm.
so I don't, I don't I don't thinkthat's necessarily everybody's fault.
(35:37):
And I think people are interested like,I'll, I'll give you an example.
You know, we have a team of analystsand we do a lot of stuff with SAR.
Sometimes it's like Sentinel, you know,it's not necessarily like the hype.
You know,we do use umbra from time to time.
Usually it's funded through some typeof, government customer.
if we're lucky, we get, you know,we get umbra
imagery, data, I should say,
(35:59):
and there is a thirst
there to learn more about it,but it is kind of like it seems
it seems complex and there's like,maybe a barrier to entry somewhere.
And there where, you know,these are scientists.
Maybe they should have a YouTube channel.Do they have a YouTube channel?
You know, how do theyhow do we actually help people learn
more about it so that we can proliferatethe use cases so people
(36:22):
can actually take advantage of itso that the United States can stay ahead.
And and the talent pool, became,
and and be aheadin that way, you know, like,
so I was looking
at scientific papers on radar.
The Chinese have releasedthousands of scientific papers
(36:42):
on space based radar.
The United States has released,I think, 90.
Wow. So we like that's a real problem.
And our open data,
our open data, I think is anotherrevolution, much like our licensing.
So our open data is free.
(37:05):
we're taking, I think, somewherebetween 10 and 20 images
per day of the different locations,
just so that people can use itand they can use it, they can monetize it.
They understand that we do a lot of thingslike ports or,
arms or like all these different sectors.
(37:26):
So essentially all we can do isgo to a customer and be like, okay, you're
looking at farms, here's a bunch of farmfree farm data, monetize it,
demonstrate a
use to your customer,and then buy the data.
So I think that the key there
to the do they know how to do that.
(37:47):
Like if I were toif I were to take what you said
and bring it like next door to me,I have a team of image analysts.
Right. I said monetize this.
They wouldn't know how to do that.
I don't like doing.
But yeah,I mean, you have a very good point.
It's like, look, are we going to have thisour education center for excellence?
Gosh, I hope so.
But I think might is likeif I put radar data
(38:11):
in front of college students for free,
we are 100 steps closer
to widely for knowledge.
And I think our open datacertainly is a an option.
Right.
Like you're providing optionalityto the market that did not ever exist
(38:31):
before, knowing no one has ever gotten
huge radar data sets for free from space.
I remember when we first started,
we bought a textbook with a CD-Rom
that had a single sample image on,
like from that to
I think we've released $4 millionat our prices, which probably would be
(38:53):
the equivalent of $40 millionfrom like a prime, like an Airbus.
is is such a step forward
that just did not exist before.
So if you're interested in syntheticaperture radar, you need to go to umbra.
Was umbra that space? Right? We're not.
That's to be confused with,
(39:14):
the other companythat pops up when you Google umbra. Yes.
Which is the modern home and decor.
just to make sure it's not modern homedecor, it's
definitely the one related to space and,radar
imagery.
I mean, I just find what you're doing
super interesting, you know, like, it's
(39:38):
launching, like, launchingsomething in the space, you know, and then
there's a very small pool of peoplethat really understand it
at a in depth level,like you're talking about.
And from a businessas an entrepreneur myself
and a business person,I'm thinking, man, that's risky.
You know? Man, that's risky.
what do you thinkare the biggest opportunities
in there, for you that maybe you guyshaven't tapped into yet?
(40:01):
Like what'swhat's what's next in the market space?
that you're like, maybe that might be something, you know,
so we do futureany kind of analysis on our own.
okay.
Which is because we don't want to havea channel conflict with our customers.
But I sure in this demonstratedby many providers who are like,
oh, what are you looking at?
(40:22):
Maybe I can make money from that.
I think it's a very negative wayto run and run a business.
so the answer is like,what cool idea can an analytics company
come up with and how can we help themin the way we can help them?
Is an open license free data.
You know, you need to start enablingyour customers to make money themselves,
(40:45):
rather than tryingto steal from them or or,
you know, we just it is so importantto be a positive player in the market
where everyone is like,well, we like the other guys.
They're not going to screw us.
I think that's the way all providersshould do that.
at that point, you'reyou're more of a partner
(41:05):
with that analytics providerbecause ultimately they're providing,
an answer to an end customerwho's paying for it.
Right?
And in turn, getting paid.
So partnerships are a big area.
are there any other I mean, howwould you ever have a successful business
if your customers could trust you?
Right?
(41:25):
This doesn't work. Yeah.
it simply doesn't work.
well, I'll I'll I'll take that back.
Only only in the government
contracting space can you have zero trust,
and your business do just finebecause these contracts get awarded there.
Fixed. You have something, and I can't.
(41:45):
It's immovable, you know, Bob knowsFred at the office, and they've.
They went to,
you know, junior high together orthey were served in the military together.
And, you know, that relationship's great,but the rest of the company is crap.
So they're going to win anyways, right?
I would say only in the governmentspace is what you're saying.
not true, unfortunately.
(42:07):
But for the rest of it,
for the rest of it.
So what you're saying is true,but everyone is tired.
They're everyone.
Everyone is tired of it.
The the the antibodies to
everybody is just sick of it.
And you're seeing
(42:28):
the industry very, very slowly evolve.
And, you know,there was a big announcement
with Andrew winning that billion dollar,
jet contract.
Yeah.
It never happenedfive years ago would have never happened.
Well it didn't happen.
Well also Boeing just won or Boing
Boing lost a big, contract
(42:51):
to, Sierra Nevada to do, like,
you know, up the sector planeand a bunch of other aircraft,
$13 billion contract and Sierra Nevada,that's not a household name.
Everybody knows Boeing, right?
But Sierra Nevada, you know, that'sthat's interesting that they have that.
And then Anduril popping up obviouslysome of these other kind of new tech
(43:14):
tech focused, just like not.
Yeah.
You I mean, well,I don't want to criticize Boeing, but,
you know, you're just not getting.
How do you deliver the best valueto the taxpayer?
And clearlyit is not some of these organizations
who are just like spending$1 billion on a fighter jet
(43:37):
that does not fly in the rainlike that doesn't make sense anymore.
Right?
And like I say, the free market solvesall problems.
Government is not the free market.
And you have a lot of this,like crony ism that maybe exists.
People are sick and tired of itbecause it's
it's well, it's unfair,but now it's becoming dangerous.
(43:59):
Like it's becoming dangerous to the pointwhere like, right,
we need to evolve our military to points
like fight with gigantic nation statesthat don't have this.
And maybe they have it
and it's their corruption is so efficientthat they're very efficient corruption.
Yeah.
But like, we, But these companies are capable, like,
(44:21):
every single prime,every single government person was like
you, you're you're putting a hinge onantenna that's never going to work.
Like, there's no like there's
there's ratchetsand it's going to move and blah, blah.
And I'm like, you have a hinge on a door,like, what are you talking, a hinge?
That's not a big that'sthat's not a big lift.
(44:41):
And then suddenly they're like,this is never going to work.
We find we found a group of investorsthat said hinge could probably work like
it's this free, asymmetrical bent likethe hinge works for the best thing. And
best thing since sliced bread.
We'll take the back.
And why is why is that a big deal?
The hinge on the antenna.
(45:03):
Like, can you explain that?
like, so we have, antenna that folds out
so right here, it's like,looks like a little cat.
And then so our launch cost is very,very low.
Like,
I don't probably can't afford it,but it's like, sure.
Not more than $1 million.
(45:24):
So then it goes up.
And so the whole thing is we're competingwith these large legacy
satellites that are gigantic.
And our antenna deploys to it like 3.8.
I mean, I think it's
the ones that we have in space, probably3.8 or 4m.
so they're huge.
(45:44):
And if they're circular, it's r squared.
So we have the same surfacearea of like a school bus.
Okay.
And that allows us to likewhen we send an impulse down
bounces off Earth, and then we havea really, really big way to receive it,
which is why our dataso crisp relative to anybody else's.
So so is the hinge just allowsthat expansion.
(46:07):
Like kind of it's like almostlike a closed flower and then open floor.
Okay. It's like that makes sense.
Does not seem like makes sense,does not seem like a big innovation.
But nine years agodid you patent the hinge?
We did.
See this is a big innovation.
Yeah.
You know, as long as you got a patent,their first patent,
(46:28):
on something like thatin like 20 years. Wow.
And so,
we we talked about some of the
mean. I feel like the.
Yeah, if you probably sit here all dayand just talk about
what's happening in the governmentand this,
you know, are they are they, largestcustomer, the US government,
(46:50):
I mean, just make an assumption,but that's not the case.
The US government is a large part of our.
It's got it, got it.
well, you know, it is what it is.
but it's a special relationship, right?
I mean,
I think that we probably don't have that,but for us, it is a really, really.
(47:12):
We did it, you know?
David.
Look, I have a, come and take it thingon my wall, like,
we're, And I'm bringing big American flagnext to it.
So, like.
We are patriots.
We love this country.
and we want to delivervalue to the country.
And, look, government is in many casesnot the easiest customer
(47:33):
and in some cases, the best customer.
Right.
And we want to support them.
And I believe they want to support us.
Or are there any other SARcompanies that are U.S based?
Yeah, okay.
I wasn't I wasn't tracking okay.
They're not here.So you don't have to name drop them.
(47:54):
okay.
Very very good I wasn't sure.
I thought you guys weremaybe the only one.
I know a lot of thea lot of the SAR companies are foreign.
that's. Or maybe.
Yeah, there's only two in the United.
Okay, okay.
well, yeah.
You're right. There's.That's not a big pool to compete with.
(48:15):
are you guysalways going to stick with SAR,
or are there other technologiesthat are like that we should launch?
you know, some other type of sensor,you know, or,
Sigint sensor or whatever, like,is there anything there
or are you guys always strictlygoing to focus on what SaaS providing
(48:37):
or are there are there other thingsyou could maybe throw on the same?
And I'm talking about this like an idiot.
I don't know anything about satellites.
is there any other sensorsthat you could throw on there
that maybe
empower SAR to be better, enableSAR to be more useful to that,
you know, guy tracking chicken, chicken,eggs or whatever.
(48:59):
So this goes to your first question.
Did I think that I would be,did I eat like, whatever as a kid,
a the founder of a synthetic apertureradar company?
The answer is now right.
But what is trueis that we will do anything
that produces the same profit marginas our radar business.
And so we've looked at other stuff,
(49:24):
and it is not to say that we wouldn't
do something else, but like the keep you.
I refuse to have a businessthat is not profitable.
I'm not doing it.
I, I there's a lot of these satelliteproviders are publicly traded.
I read their panels.
I'm not doing them.
I'm not doing it to make.
(49:46):
Like I'm not doing it.
So if we do somethingor if we pursue like mission solutions,
let's say where like we have one missionsolutions contracts.
one is publicly knownas like the DARPA contract for satellites
that are flying in concertwith one another.
that does all kinds of you have satellitesto fly close to one another.
(50:09):
You can do a lot of really fun things.
we will, especially SAR.
Right.
Because you can bounce the way thingsbounce off all kinds of things.
Okay.
Because it is okay. It's not like this.
They swapping selfies, though,you're saying, oh, look at this
okay, I seeI see what you guys are all about. yes.
(50:29):
It's it's a big selfie.
This is the the team on selfies.
Okay.
so yeah,we will pursue anything that makes money.
Okay.
That makes sense.
So our mission solutions businesswhere we're doing specific
like missions or constellations for sure
for ally governments or own government,is is a growing part of the business.
(50:51):
I don't know, like we yeah, we
we're not going to pursue somethinghaphazardly.
Everything that we have ever donehas been extremely deliberate.
And it's been deliberate because,you know, previously we're capital
constrained.
So it's like we didn'thave the money in the in.
(51:12):
So we launched our first two satellites,only having raised $12 million to build
them were like,that is not a lot of money.
Listen right.
so we had to come up with innovations
that allowed us to, like, generatelarge amounts of revenue, like
just because we make money now and justbecause we have access to more capital
(51:34):
doesn't mean that we're not going tobehave as scrappy as possible
if you got a scrap.
And if you if you solve problems withmoney and not technology, you will lose.
You will not have a businessbecause somebody else will do it.
Like I said, it's hard.
Like typically the right pathis the hardest path.
(51:56):
right.
And like as time goeson, like just starts being easy, like,
I mean, just buy these partsand not have to invent anything.
right.
Well, we have a lead, and, like,
maybe we just continue doing itand that's not acceptable.
We have to be ten times betterevery single year.
Every single part of the business.
(52:17):
Down from the peopleto the satellite systems.
We do not have choice.
And that's that's a good lesson
for almost any,any business or any human really.
Like,if it's easy, it's probably not the right.
It's not the right choice for you,especially for that.
That goes to a broken part of the system.
(52:38):
Investors do not invest in startups.
Investors.
Their main purpose is to raise funds.
And the way that they raise new fundsis our internal rate of return.
So you're you have now,
if you take anybody else's money,you have somebody on your cap table
whose incentive is to have a high IRR.
(53:02):
Sure, the fastest way to get a highIRR is to, in space,
get to space,take the first image, get a new round
IPO, whatever, as quickly as possible.
The quickest way to do something is to buy
like it is way harder.
Like essentially the threelike new entrants all start.
(53:25):
All three of us had the same ideaat the same time.
We were the last to get to space
because we took a much, much harder path
where we are in invent stuffthat we haven't been very handsome.
We have.
We had significant capital constraints.
but I think ultimately has turnedout well because, I mean,
(53:48):
the common
represents a large portionof the shareholder group.
I think it's an
in terms of like,
like healthiness of the company.
I think we're by far the biggest just
but it's been way harder.
I would not recommend.
(54:09):
well, you'reyou're out there in Austin, Texas,
which is actually, you know,
kind of a, an emerging space
market, I guess you could say,it's come out of nowhere.
I guess you'd say everyone.
Houston was always the space,the space city.
Right?
(54:29):
what what changes have there been in
maybe with some of the stuffthat Elon Musk is doing with
the reusable rockets like, or are there
things that are reducing these costs,like you mentioned, about $1 million?
I'm sure that used to cost a lot more,to, to hitch a ride to space.
are you seeing some of those costsgo down on those, those types of things?
(54:50):
Now that you have,you have at least SpaceX.
But then, is in Blue Originworking on kind of the same thing.
I don't know if they're feasible yetor where they're at, but
are those costs going down? And then,
are you able
to take advantage of that to help,like you mentioned, are all about profit
and margin, you know, soI'm thinking about how do we reduce costs,
(55:13):
where those where those cost savingscome in.
So to on SpaceX,we go to the website to launch
a 150kg cost a million.
Okay.
when we started,
maybe costs like 5 million,
Starship to launch our satellite,
(55:34):
it would cost $1,200.
No. That's insane.
That's that's wild.
Holy moly.
That's that's huge.
So that I mean, that's an interesting.
But I mean, I can't even fathomthat this is what I mean by like,
if you are not innovatingand you are not staying in the cutting
(55:54):
edge, you are not scared you will fail.
Like, well, in in your instance,you get to, you get to,
Kind of ride this
wave of, of innovationthat's happening in rocketry, right?
I mean, you guys aren't buildingrockets, you're building satellites,
which help reduce
(56:17):
will reduce your costs.
sounds like significantly,but wouldn't that also create
or lower the barrier to entryto do what you're doing?
And then so in water.
So what are you doing to prepare for that.
Because it sounds like,you know, obviously there's still a ways
to go before that's a viable rocket.
they're probably getting pretty close.
(56:39):
I wouldn't bet against,
no, you won't catch mebetting against them at all.
you know,there will be a flood of of new companies
getting into the game.
if that's the cost.
I mean, $1,200.
I mean, that's peanuts, you know,
(57:01):
so now so now it's going to the focusturns instead of the launch costs you
the focus.
And I'm just guessing herethe focus becomes making that satellite
as good as humanly possible, ormaybe getting more satellites up faster.
you know,getting rid of some of the old crap
and just getting the newest, hottest,latest stuff in there.
(57:24):
Like, you tell me, like, how does,how are you thinking through that?
Well, I mean, I would I,
I a turnaround in,in some ways like I wouldn't,
I wouldn't compete
against a company with the best technologyand essentially unlimited resources
whose costs are going down and then start
(57:45):
beginning like,
I don't know that SAis going to turn into this,
like even optical hasn't turned into this,like huge thing with like 100 companies.
I mean, SA specifically is fairly niche,
but what this lower barrierto entry does is creates,
it creates far
(58:06):
more opportunities for methan it does for anyone else.
But, because we have an abundance of resources,
we also there's a lot in the culturewhere you have founders
who still run the companywith a lot of equity.
So you have other companies where are the
founders are goneand have matured past it or the founder?
(58:26):
Equity is so low that it just
it's like there's just like fi
just trying to get through it.
when you, when you have that,
that you knowmy behavior is not like some hired
CEO, David'sbehavior is not like some hired CEO.
Like right.
(58:47):
This is our company.
Like we are very like
we force innovation
like David is still
driving brilliant designs.
and now he's gone
from highly competent geniusto totally lethal
because now he has unlimitedresources of knowledge. So
(59:11):
yes, a lower barrier to entry
is good generally for the market,generally for everything.
The entire ecosystem means that you candeploy and test products much, much faster
and allows larger companiesto adopt new products much faster.
but I don't I don't see
building and launching a constellation as
(59:33):
something that anyone want to
reverse.
They might notthey might not want to do it.
But but I think even in this podcastright here, you have said
that there's only two SA companiesin the United States.
I mean, it's just going to happen, right?
Like there will be more SA companies,people, people are motivated by money.
And we talked about theyou know, federal government corruption.
(59:56):
I guarantee you there's going to be people
with connectionsand a few dollars in their pocket.
And they're they're going to wantto launch these new these new companies.
Now, you said you're innovating.
You have the resources you're pushing.
I'm just I'mjust trying to be realistic about,
you know,there is an opening in the market
if you're saying there'sonly two companies in the United States,
(01:00:19):
there will be more.
I mean, they're just there has to be.
There's no there's no choice.
that's that's the free market, right?
It's it's going to proliferateif the cost is that cheap, $1,200.
I mean, I heard anybodythink I heard the same thing at two point
am I heard the same thing in a million
or so.
Only two.
I and I think that it's maybe other peopleare smarter than us and just like
(01:00:45):
but but there's a big differencebetween $1 million, right?
$1 million even even still to the averagethe average person seems.
I'll still still probably so. No, no.
Yeah.
Like the cost when we started to launch,
any satellite for rideshare was like $100million.
Yeah.
And brought the price by 99%.
(01:01:07):
And again,they're going to drop the price by 99%.
I'm not saying that there isn't
more opportunity or lower barrier.
I'm saying isit is going to be nearly impossible
to be competitive with like,
all the best peopleworking at the same kind of company.
So like, yes, there'll be new stuff,but it'll be more niche.
(01:01:30):
I don't see it as like
a direct competitor.
And and that's what I saidearlier is like I said, the other key,
we're winning things together.
Like it's not
it's not winner for now.
For now I'm
saying yeah,yeah I know and and who knows.
(01:01:51):
hopefully they
I hope they keep buying more, more databecause, we certainly love to use it.
well, I mean, hopefully the marketdoes continue to expand and that helps.
You know, I've watched the guyswatch the market like the,
I have a pretty good sensethe revenue of all the companies.
(01:02:11):
It's going up forever.
Like the rising tide is, is rising.
Everybody up. It is great.
This is so I don't know that a new entrant
who has a new productthat gets people interested in radar,
that whatever made their their product
does time travel or whatever it is,this is time travel.
(01:02:32):
Sorry, time travel a decade.
Yeah.
they might go find
a fun game and, yeah, 12 yearold Gabe and take care of him, you know?
but but you also have at that cost, too.
You might have companiesthat are already in space and, and
and have other systems say, oh, well,maybe it's so cheap to launch now.
Maybe we just focus on building outmore, more sensor types,
(01:02:55):
getting more of those up,you know, like the,
you know, all the all the big names andsay so yeah, I think it's very attractive.
I, I yeah, I just,I don't think that expanding the market
is going to in any way be negative for us,especially when we continually
have had the best productto service and lowest cost.
So like if that's something.
(01:03:17):
So if there's lower barrier to entryor something
that somebody with no resourcescan take advantage of, it's something that
somebody with tremendous resourcesalso can take advantage.
Sure. And I wouldn't want to just I mean,
other than somebody like like
I wouldn't want to discourage somebodyfrom not starting a sorry company.
but only do it if you're preparedbecause it's very difficult, very hard.
(01:03:40):
It's very hard and it's probably soulsucking at times and late nights
and all that good stuff.
well.
Very good, very good.
So how do people find, umbra?
and what would you like, everyoneto know about what you guys are doing
besides all the cool stuff you'vealready told us about, so you can find us
(01:04:03):
at umbra, Space.com, or, dot space.
we have we're we're active on Twitter.
We're releasing a lot of really coolimagery every day on Twitter.
I have a Twitter that I sometimes use,but if I do use it, I'm very helpful.
But I think that the and myis my last name.
It's at sign. My last name.
(01:04:25):
But I think the main takeaway is that
umbra would not existif it wasn't for our customers.
Like we are a customer driven company,we want to make sure that our customers
get the best products, the lowest prices,even if it's not from us.
we're here to make sure that, like
the people in the industry,people like you can make a lot of money,
(01:04:47):
like providegreat lives for their families.
and we're not going to be successfulunless you're successful.
Well, very good. And I'm all about it.
I'll definitely,task at umbra satellite here very soon.
it's like,
and we we love using, umbrawhen we get a chance to use it.
So I really appreciate your time
(01:05:07):
and coming on to chatabout what you guys are doing.
And hopefully we'llsee you around, in Orlando,
and we'll have a better place in Orlando.
I don't go to.
I don't know Orlando, but.
Okay. All right. Well, you should.
I've done more geofence than I,
I gotcha, I gotcha.
It's all good.
Oh. Very good. make sure you check out.
We'll put links in the descriptionto connect with umbra.
(01:05:30):
And maybe you should order your ownsatellite imagery.
Yeah.
And then also get us on Sky fi if you wanta really easy way to get an image.
yeah.
And we have our entire free archive
is, on Sky fi and on our website.
Very cool, very cool.
Well appreciate it. Good.
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