Planet Labs Raises $118M Series C to Cover the Earth in Tiny Satellites
techcrunch.com
techcrunch.com
I was at the 1st Startup Weekend dedicated to Space this weekend in Bremen, Germany [3]. It was a fascinating weekend and a great opportunity to explore many NewSpace ideas. Chris Boshuizen gave a remote talk on the Friday. They’re differentiating themselves from the competition through their high repeat rate and I think they have a lot of interesting avenues for growth ahead.
It’s good to see institutional investors getting involved in NewSpace. Nikunj is a family friend; I’m looking forward to picking his brain about this deal and his view of the market. Space Angels Network [4] is also doing a great job of raising the profile of this new industry. Hopefully, we see a lot more investment in basic products and services that will open up a tremendous number of space-based applications in the coming decade.
Congrats to the Planet Labs guys!
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NewSpace
[3] http://www.up.co/communities/germany/bremen/startup-weekend/...
We always ensure that our satellites are well below the
UN 25 year guideline, and we will never launch a satellite
into an orbit with a predicted lifetime greater than 25 years.
http://archive.ists.or.jp/upload_pdf/2011-r-36.pdf
http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Space_Engineering_Technolo...
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/09/140930090447.ht...
Small satellites raise some great systems questions... certainly outside my expertise, but interesting.
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0273117711...
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0273117710...
Note the authors include the founder(s) from back when they were at NASA.
link: http://spacenews.com/spacex-google-matchup-sets-up-satellite...
Some stunningly creative technology too.
The geostationary satellites are perched very high above the earth, and take frequent pictures of the 'full disk' of earth. This is invaluable for weather forecasting, as we can see what clouds are doing in real time. However, they are so far away that you need big, expensive satellites and big, expensive launches, and the resulting resolution is quite poor (like one pixel per 5km depending on latitude, and worse at high latitudes).
On the other hand, the low-earth orbit satellites fly just above the atmosphere, and can take pictures at much higher (spatial) resolution, but may only fly over a particular spot of land once per day. So you trade temporal resolution for spatial resolution.
With miniaturization, advances in imaging and related technology, and decreasing launch costs, it should be possible to deploy a constellation of small low-earth-orbit satellites, to provide good temporal AND spatial resolution. That enables a whole bunch of new applications.
However, I'd be a bit concerned that long-lived airborne drones flying at high altitudes might do the same thing (good spatial AND temporal resolution), but at a lower price point and in a more efficient way (since you only fly where you want to look, instead of covering the entire globe).
Perhaps I'm missing something?
To get a sense of what 17,000 mph ground speed looks like from a satellite's point of view: https://www.planet.com/pulse/la-to-vegas-in-52-seconds/
With orbiting satellites, most of the time the birds are over the ocean and empty stretches of land that most people don't care about. You're wasting most of your bandwidth and storage on places that someone might be interested in one day...
Don't get me wrong, the work you're doing is very cool, and global data sets are really fun! Unfortunately, I've found that the 'value density' of these global data sets isn't great.
How do you know nobody is interested in the 'ocean and empty stretches of land'? It could provide a lot of meteorological and geological data for scientists for example.
Our main use case was for wind and solar renewable energy, but we also entertained other uses, like architecture and agriculture. These data sets turned out to be difficult to monetize; while the continental US data set may have broken even, the rest of the globe never recouped the cost of storage, let alone the supercomputer time. It's not that people around the world weren't interested in the data, they just couldn't justify paying for it.
Even less frequent: Landsat 8 repeats every 16 days: http://www.usgs.gov/blogs/features/usgs_top_story/landsat-8-...
One advantage they're keen to promote is that a 15-year lifespan sat has, by the end of its life, a 15-year-old camera. Technology marches on, and small cheap (nearly disposable!) satellites can just roll improvements into their replacement cycle in a way that the big boys can't.
Do airspace laws still go all the way up to if you can fly at say 60-80,00ft? I guess they must, we're talking about private spy planes aren't we.
| Round | $ in MM | post-$ | non-VC % |
|-----------|----------|----------|----------|
| Founding | - | - | 100 |
| Angel | 1 | 10 | 90 |
| Series A | 13.1 | 50 | 75 |
| Series B | 52 | 225 | 58 |
| Series C | 118 | 550 | 45 |
I picked these valuations out of thin air. The only "standard" thing I've seen is that most VC funds are structured for 20% minimum stake in Series A rounds. Later-stage rounds often target less ownership.
The above calculation doesn't take into account any stock for employees. With that, I'd estimate the founders still collectively own about 30-35% of the company.
This could also be totally wrong, since I have no idea what the real numbers are. But as an exercise, you get the idea. :)
[1] https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/planet-labs
[2] http://techcrunch.com/2015/01/20/planet-labs-95m/
[3] http://blogs.wsj.com/venturecapital/2015/01/23/data-collecti...
I suspect that the founder ownership percentages are actually lower than you've suggested and that right now they own somewhere around 20 to 30% which is still valued at $110m to $165m.
Is there a specific valuation here you think is too high an estimate?
Makes me wonder about adding "Procure a personal ASAT system" to my dream list for the future.
The world is changing fast with all sorts of relevance in that realm. I think it's almost futile for us to try and comprehend how this stuff will work and how we feel about it. History is often notionally zeroed at the invention of written records. The king of an illiterate realm is prehistoric while Nebuchadnezzar or Hammurabi are historic rulers, leaving behind an intentional record from their times.
There are people today with thousands of hours of HD video and audio records. Facebook photos. HN debates. You can know who they are and how they think, to an extent, from those records. Their great grandchildren will be able to too. This is getting stronger. The quantity and quality of information being recorded is enormous. You might call it post-history. The period abbot which our level of knowledge is as complete as it is about the present.
I think it's the kind of great change that can't be understood from foresight.