Planet: Will Marshall and Robbie Schingler

Hey, really quick before we start the show, a lot of you have lots of questions about how I built this. Like How do you pick guests, or where do you record the show, or how can I get in touch with Howard Schultz? Spoiler alert on that one, we can't help you, but we can try and answer any questions you might have about the show, our work, or even me. If you'd like to submit a question, please visit gyros dot com and fill out the form, and we'll answer some of your questions right here on the show in the coming weeks. Again, that's G U Y R A Z. dot com. The first image that we got was a forested region in Oregon.

I was asleep when we got our first picture in. And Robbie, didn't you come and Wake me up with the picture. And we were just like, In awe. 'Cause we could.

See that the picture was in focus. We could see individual trees. We couldn't believe it. I mean we were in tears. And we were like, Oh my God. We've done it.

Like we can do this. We can do this. From NPR, it's how I built this, a show about innovators, entrepreneurs, idealists, and the stories behind the movements they built. I'm Guy Raz and on the show today how three scientists at NA left their jobs to build satellites literally in a garage and launched planet labs.

Data company that now takes about three million photos of the Earth. Every single day. Sometimes starting a business can feel as complex as rocket science. The legal filings, the compliance letters, the accounting structure, and that's just the first few months. No.

Imagine doing all of that? In addition to actually doing rocket science. Which is what makes the idea of Planet Labs. Seem almost insurmountable. Because what Robbie Shingler and Will Marshall set out to do more than a decade ago

Was to completely reimagine the business of space satellites. and to turn it into a simpler, cheaper, and fundamentally more accessible tool for people to use. Robbie, Will, and their partner Chris Boshausen We're all scientists at NASA and we're way too familiar with the slow, bureaucratic, and expensive process of getting a satellite launched. Not to mention the size of those satellites. Some of them can be as big as a school bus.

So what if the co founders wondered You could launch a much smaller satellite. As small as a loaf of bread. And do it for a few hundred thousand dollars rather than hundreds of millions of dollars. And what if those satellites, instead of peering at distant stars,

could be used to explore our own planet. to take millions of images of the Earth every day. tracking the health of crops and coral reefs. and detecting things like oil spills and forest fires. It turns out you can learn a lot about how the earth is changing.

Simply by photographing it every day. Anyway, back when they launched Planet Labs in 2010, The three founders built their prototype satellites in a small garage in the Bay Area. They didn't have the money to work in a so-called clean room, a hermetically sealed lab without any dust or particles, so

They made their own version using off the shelf items from Target. The company has come a long way since then. Today, it captures about three millian images of the earth. A day. And it's now simply known as Planet.

It also just went public on the New York Stock Exchange, raising nearly six hundred million dollars in capital. But Let's start at the beginning. Before Will Marshall and Robbie Schingler met in two thousand one, They were leading sort of parallel lives on different sides of the world.

Will grew up in England and got a PhD in physics at Oxford. Robbie grew up in California and the Midwest. He also studied physics, and both he and Will spent time doing internships at NASA. Yeah. The two of them finally met when they were both in their early twenties and attending a conference in Europe.

Yes, it was two thousand one in Graz in Austria, um, where it was a a UN organized conference on basically using space to help humanity. And uh And it gathered some really amazing people and uh I met Robbie. I can't remember the exact moment, but we definitely got on well together at that forum.

And um do you you clicked right away, Robbie? What do you what do you remember about Will at the time? I remember What I remember of Will is um outgoing, Gregarious and uh and really a motivator for people. You know, he he really would would always always dream big and get people to stretch out of their comfort zone. So I remember that

when I when I first met him and that it's uh so now true today than never before that is uh again one of his superpowers. Not only back the envelope maths but also the ability to motivate people Yeah, and all right. So the two of you meet. At this conference. And what what you just kinda kept in touch or or what like what what did you'cause I know that you would begin to collaborate on different projects over the next few years, but at that conference, what were you talking about that you wanted to collaborate on?

Yeah. Again, we have to remember this is twenty years ago and uh we were, you know, in our early twenties and for me it was like meeting a tribe, right? People who saw the world in a similar way. And um also all highly accomplished and highly motivated. So people wanted to work on projects. Um and at that time we had email. Yes. And so we'd go Back home, back to our schools or grad school, and and so we would write papers together uh around space policy.

So we would actually do around the world editing, you know, everyone would have it for like eight hours at a time and hand it off and go around in a week you'd you'd have a really, really good paper. And and yeah, that was uh that was actually kind of the the genesis really of of our Friendship and partnership was all about the art of creation. So is it fair to say To both of you Rabbi that at this time

You guys were sort of part of this group of young kind of researchers working for, you know, space agencies and space research agencies, part of this group of young Emerging Um you know. Scientists would have you.

who were really wanted to See if you could have some kind of influence over policy eventually, right? Was that is that fair to say that that's sort of how you how you saw yourselves? I wouldn't say it quite the the goal was policy. The the the goal was to have the effect on the world. We thought policy as one

uh mechanism. I mean another is of course just em executing projects. I mean I think it was more It was the vision of using space to help humanity. uh you know, we can see that space played a big part in the Cold War and and in geopolitics. And it plays a big part in sustainability, monitoring the environment, plays a big part in commerce. Yes, and so much of infrastructure.

of our modern Interconnected economy. flows through space. And a lot of people just don't know about that. Yeah. We all we all now have You know, we don't know GPS and and and location now and it's just that is just backend infrastructure for society that that we actually

always expect to be there. And those all come from space. And in fact if I mean like I don't know how deep you want to go into this stuff, but all of that started from military application. And now has become A public good.

I remember I mean in in two thousand Two. I remember Going to Afghanistan as a reporter, he And there were a few people who had those Garmin

like handheld devices that could kind of geolocate you, but they were very crude compared to what you see today on just our iPhones. And they were amazing. Yep. And that was that was twenty years ago, right? Like we we have to remember that that was not very far. Uh into the past. Crazy, yeah. And as Robbie was saying, the fact that you could navigate I mean the military had GPS back into the seventies, or certainly by the eighties.

And we're using it for guiding missiles, tanks, all this sort of stuff, but They they they had a very smart forethought that this would be a global good and And of course We certainly agree with that. And to Robby's point.

A lot of these things started in the military vector and and w a lot of our thrust was how can everyone else benefit from these things? Uh and again, like back to that theme, how do we use space Tools to help everyone on the planet. Hm. So uh all right, you're You're both writing.

And collaborating on on various papers about about these types of things. And And I guess in two thousand two you got together at another space conference, but th this this one was in Houston? That's right.

One of the uh fun things that happened that that conference is uh we met Pete Warden. He's a good character introduced'cause he's relevant to our stories. So Uh we've written one of these papers. One of them was basically about space weapons and keeping space uh from weaponization. And then

In this Bar in Houston where this conference was at. Uh a mutual friend had introduced us to General Pete Warden, who is basically running all the space weapon programs for the United States government in the Air Force. And we were like, What? And uh Fem was like, Well, this is you know, the people that think that space weapons are a bad idea. This is Pete Warden that runs the space weapon programs. Have a go. And and we in in this evening we had this fascinating conversation about You can't build space weapons, that's bad, that economically doesn't make sense, and it doesn't even work technically, and we were writing equations out on why it can't work technically. And then he was like, Oh, you don't understand, I've got to protect US assets from threats and you don't know what you're talking about, da da da

And we got increasingly drunk actually because he kept on buying his drinks. And um But the next day, to his credit, he wrote us an email and he said, Well, I've really enjoyed our conversation last night. Why don't you write a paper together? You guys write the Cons and I'll write the pros of space base weapon systems. Well, roll forward a few more years he moved from the Air Force to NASA. to run Nassau Ames Research Center.

and he basically invited us to come work with him and he was like, Well, I know we disagree on this area, but this will be more about obviously science and exploration and would love you to come and work for me out there. This guy Pete Warden. We should mention he he was the director of the Ames Research Center. I think uh until like twenty fifteen or something for he's kind of a a legendary figure in that

world and he was also it's interesting'cause I read a little bit about him. Um He was a real critic of NASA, like he was a public critic. Of the NASA bureaucracy and stuff like that, right? A self licking ice cream cone. Self licking ice cream cone. You were about Nassau. Yeah. He he was critical and he was also just very creative, but he was brought in to shake things up a little bit. And one of his ways of shaking things up a little bit was inviting young whipper snappers like Robbie and I and

others to come work for him and alongside some of the more, let's say, institutional folks that have been there for a while. And let's let's see what comes out. So that was it. Like he was basically he ran the Ames Research Center. I mean sounds a little bit like Park Xerox, you know, in the seventies, right? Where all this I mean, he was a guy who could say, Hey, he liked you guys. You challenged his thinking, maybe or you know And uh he said, Hey, why don't you come work for me at

Yeah. we we've sort of h give you a canvas to help you to build spacecraft missions and and and we thought, wow, I mean that's a really unique opportunity and it's very Practical. We wanted to not just write the policy paper, we wanted to work on the system, whatever it was, to uh get that to become a reality. Alright, so you guys get to

The Ames Research Center. In Mountain view. That this point I mean you guys have known each other now for five years, now you're in the same place. And uh and you move in together, right? You get you get you get a house together. Yes, when we flew out to Nassa Ames

uh we were looking to build a community house. We like living in community, the fervour of intellectual conversations and in fact You got a bit of a reputation for being a place where creative ideas Um happened uh Especially again at this intersection of space and And and uh Silicon Valley.

And and we'll get to this later, but um you still both of you still live together in a community house. Which I I always call the group house, but um I guess it's a little different. So Help me understand this. You There's nothing kind of different or unusual about like a group house, especially for young people trying to save money. But this is not what that was.

You it sounds like you very deliberately had this idea of A bunch of colleagues who worked together at at the Ames Research L Center. Also living together. to continue the conversation that they were having at work.

At home? That's right. As if it as if we weren't we weren't full enough during the day. Yeah, no. Actually but it wasn't just um NASA people, we had students who were at Stanford, people that worked at Apple, people that worked at Google, all these places. And that created a fervor of intellectual dizziness that w was always fun for us. So it was a mixture of sort of Silicon Valley and space. uh in one house. Uh yeah, I had found it just on Craig's list. Uh happened I just searched for the a house with more than six bedrooms and it was the pretty much the only one in that area. Alright. So you guys moved to the Bay Area. You're living in Group house in Cupertino.

And P. Warden is your boss. And what did you guys do? Help me understand. I mean, this is Not everybody understands. space research can mean a million things, like journalism can mean a million things, or finance can mean a million things, but What what were you actually working on?

We uh we really wanted to well we were working on bringing small satellites to NASA. So you know, Will and I and and a bunch of other people um work to set up a mission design center, which is um, you know, when when you think about a new mission, what you can do with technology, the scientific utility, how to actually bring the team together, how much it's gonna cost, how long it's gonna take. That is the the very beginnings of articulating what a new mission could be. So we work to actually set that up. with the insight that we wanted to do satellites that were much smaller. If they're smaller, they're cheaper. If they're cheaper, you can take more risk. If you can take more risk, then you can have then and and they're cheaper, then you can do more missions. If you can do more missions, then you diversify your risk, then it increases the acceleration of knowledge.

And and so we we work to systematize that and and we set up the small spacecraft office there. All right, so you were and and what were you working on, Will? Well the same um sett setting up the small spacecraft office, uh but then Robbie and I uh worked on a few different missions. When you're working uh for for both of you, when you're working in a place like the Ames Research Center Uh obviously a NASA lab. Is there is there just like unlimited

Money to play around with like is it pretty straightforward. Like hey, I have this idea and There's just money. Not unlimited, but I mean Is there kind of a big sandbox to play in and and funding for it? I would say money is really hard to come by. Um, but what you do have at Ames in in particular, which is, you know, one of a research centers. So it's not a development center or or a human spaceflight center, it's more of a research center. Uh it it it's it's a really unique place. It's it's almost like being in a university as well as being in in like a

a prototyping lab and capability kind of together. And so that's a perfect petri dish. And I think that that's one of the reasons why Pete Warden wanted a a bit of a you know, a younger generation of people to come in is to You know, we were blind to all of the constraints. Um, because most constraints of of a large organization is is kind of like, you know cultural um and process oriented. So we were blind to all that stuff.

And um and it allowed for us to just like take a first principles approach toward why don't we build it in this way. So We then came up with what would be like systemic projects, you know, projects that Um, you know, just get it done in twelve months or twenty four months. to then learn from that and then iterate and iterate. So then we can change how

space systems are are are developed and and and what is the art of the possible that could be done? And and meanwhile, uh Will Um, you and and another guy at NASA, um whose name is Chris Boshausen. Uh you were working on this project called

Phone sat. Um w what exactly were were you guys trying to do? Yes, well it's pretty much what it says on the cover. It was putting a phone into space. Putting a phone into a like into space as a satellite? Pretty much. Um It was to throw some phones in space. We actually put three and they were Google Nexus ones that We had got donated from Google. Not a big donation, like two hundred and fifty bucks each.

Yeah, well they gave us a box of them, but still I agree. Yeah. Um and uh the But that was important because it was the first operating system that was open source. And um and really the insight that the the team had is What's so different? About a phone. From a satellite. And turns out like

the engineering processes, the capabilities internally, all of that stuff is is very similar. The If you like if you look at the innards of phone, it has GPS, it has cameras, it have radios, it has and if you look at the list of things you need in a satellite, it's GPS and cameras and radios and and it's actually most of the same. Remember smartphones were very new. uh you know, it was only a few years after the iPhone had come out and and but but before they were just these clunky phones and now they suddenly had all these other things that were most of what a spacecraft needed. We had to add some extra batteries and a slightly um bigger antenna for the radio in particular. Um but uh apart from that we literally stuck the phone into a little box and put three into space so Um

Um actually I think I almost got fired for that project. Chris and I had started Phone SAS, um, and uh we had a small team on it, but we got quite a long way before if you like the officials at NASA knew it was happening. They were almost stuck on the rocket by the time they did. And then they're like, what the heck are you doing? Putting phones into space. And we were like, come on, it's gonna be really interesting because we're gonna figure out if you can make satellites even cheaper and and and eventually though okay, fine.

Have a go. And and the phones work just fine in space and we had amateur radio uh astronomers around the world get these little Yagi antennas, these little handheld antennas to to follow the satellite. the little pictures that it've been taking with a Yeah.

And email them to us and then we reconstructed these pictures and we're like, Okay, it worked All right, so this was a time where the I mean the idea was let's let's talk let's kinda dump dive into satellites for a sec, right NASA. um obviously has the greatest space satellites in in human history, right? That you know can Look way out into the cosmos.

Um But they're huge. Anybody who's been to the Air and Space Museum or You know, one of these museums where they've got decommissioned spaceships can see how big

some of these satellites are. They're huge or expensive. They You know, they're not always totally reliable. Um So the idea was hey

Can we start to look at Smaller satellites, it may not be as robust. It may not be able to do the kinds of things that like the Hubble can do. But could do pretty important things like

take images of the earth. Was that the idea behind this This NASA project? That's exactly right. That's exactly right. And and the Especially

Leveraging the miniaturization of electronics for phones and computers. It was a revolution. Mm-hmm. And we were like, How can we in the space community leverage that revolution. Historically NASA had had to o invent almost everything. The it's radios, it's

microprocessors for the Apollo program and they developed all this stuff themselves. But now the billions and billions of dollars that would be going on in the consumer electronics industry by Apple and Samsung and Google and all these companies was far outpacing what NASA could spend on the development of electronics. And we were just like, Okay, well, what if we learnt to follow and leverage this technology? A small phone sat like the one that we launched couldn't do what Hubble does because it doesn't have a big telescope. Right. Right. But they could do some things. They could take pictures at lower resolution, and uh that might be still useful for something, especially because we could put a lot of them up there. Right. Because there are obviously different kinds of satellites or communication satellites. I mean Some people have watched. direct TV or you know, watch television through satellite. Sirius XM radio channels beamed from satellites. Exactly right. And and so when we briefly thought when we were thinking of leaving NASA to s to do this project, we were mainly thinking about

humanitarian and And commercial goals. Uh maybe thinking about communication satellites or earth observation. But when we looked and this is back to how Robbie and I m met, um when we looked at what was then the Millennium Development Goals. These are the UN Millennium Development Goals, right? Yes, correct. Which was basically a summary of all the world's problems.

We looked down that list and said how can we as space geeks help help the biggest challenges on the earth? It seemed to reason that If we could take more regular images of the earth, we could have a lot of them. And it's really true, like we could help stop deforestation, help people grow smarter crops, so help with their food access, we could help after disaster response, after floods or fires. There were so many things that if we had more regular imagery of the earth, Typically before our mission, you could only get a new image of the Earth, maybe once every month, or sometimes every year, depending on the resolution you needed. But we thought well

Why couldn't it be every day? And then that would be much more useful as a disaster response not to wait for a month for the flooding information. How about Have the day before and the day afterwards. But help me understand. How Working on this project.

Inspire you guys to go off and do this on your own. What what was it that that you saw in this technology and the possibility of it. that then led you to say hey We can actually do this and turn this into something.

Bigger. It was very much a stars aligned moment. What we realised was we had learnt a little bit about how to build spacecraft uh at NASA. And here is this list of all the world's problems. And if we put up a lot of these

uh little satellites that would take pictures of the Earth, we could help a lot of those problems. It made most sense, especially we were in Silicon Valley and we were like we could go fastest if we could just get private capital. And we had just enough skills to pull that off. The world needed it, and the technology was just about ready, like from all these consumer electronics, to make it happen. And so we were like, Oh my God. It wasn't just a

It wasn't it didn't seem like an option to me at the time. It felt I was compelled Because It was so obvious we should do this project. It w everything lined up. When we come back in just a moment. How will Robbie and Chris start working on building a satellite the size of a bread box?

And then How they managed to get that tiny satellite? into orbit. Stay with us, I'm Guy Raz, and you're listening. how I built this.

Hey, welcome back to How I Built This. I'm Guy Raz. So it's the last day of 2010. And Will Robbie and another NA scientist, Chris Boshausen, are getting together, as they always do. On New Year's Eve.

And as they clink their champagne glasses The three of them are also talking about starting a business. To build and launch small satellites. For taking pictures of the earth. We were there and Chris was there, Will was there, and they're like

We're gonna do this. And uh and so I could tell. From Will and Chris. There was That spark.

That the team knew. they could do this and do this quickly. And it does require throwing out a bit of the traditional processes around building aerospace systems. And so uh it it wasn't something that we could actually do within within NASA. Why not?

Well, um if you guy, you started talking about, you know, the Hubble, you know, it it's the size of of a school bus. It is huge. These are exquisite systems, they are amazing systems. Like the microprocessor was really scaled through Aerospace. uh capabilities, right? They had such hard problems to solve they had to invent new technology. Um and um and just like any organization.

When you become successful With a particular thing. in the future, that could become an anchor for you. Right? And so Great, that's your success.

You make a system out of it. You have all these processes. and then you actually do a requirements flowdown. That's how you build engineering systems. And uh and that is how space systems are built at NASA. And what we wanted to do was

to do it the other way around. Just do good enough. and uh and prototype it, learn from it. Iterate. Yeah, this so it was mainly we wanted more like the Silicon Valley release early, release often software strategy than the requirements driven, very careful science project of NASA.

Also the application was more like How do we help? Farmers, so that's a commercial application. How do we help disaster response? Uh so that's a more humanitarian application. We wanted to help those things. And whereas NASA's really

pretty much mandated to focus on science and exploration. This was about neither. Got it. Okay. So you had this Idea that's a In order to do what you wanted to do, you had to leave NASA.

So what was the what was the first step you took? It was the three of you, right? It was will And Robbie, the two of you and Chris and the three of you what sat down and said, Hey, let's Let's let's start a b a company together. Yeah, well um I I guess we sort of slowly evolved over that next year. That was in twenty ten, just at the end of twenty ten when you when we technically formed the company, incorporated the company. uh but we slowly started moving more and more time from NASA to what became planet and um

Robbie and I were living in that group house called Rainbow and We literally started building it in the garage. And then eventually left NASA. Alright, so now you guys decide to start a company. Um and it's going to to be a company that that will launch

Small Photographic satellites. into space. What what that's not the right term, not photographic satellites. What are they calling earth observation satellites. Okay, earth observation satellites. So building these things, by the way, just to build a prototype. Right. How much did that cost? I'm just curious. How how much money did it cost, I guess? Do you recollect Webby? It was probably like On the order of like ten thousand dollars. Ten thousand bucks. Okay. So between the three of you, you could probably pull some money together and

Make it happen'cause you you had savings from your job. That's exactly what we did. We each put in fifty thousand dollars, I think. No, it wasn't that much. I was It was actually three different amounts. I can't remember, but it was it was it was Upwards to fifty K. 'Cause that's still a lot of money. Yeah, you're right. It was a lot for uh s we were NASA uh type stipends. You know, this was not we were not working for Google. Right. So how did you guys have the cash? Well we just saved up I guess we didn't live exactly a luxurious lifestyle. I mean we didn't have family, we we and and we lived in a community house.

By choice. And I guess one of the first things you guys did was to build a A prototype of what your satellite would look like. I mean you had some experience

building things. So tell me about that prototype. We built a test one at Rainbow uh the k this community house in the garage. We added a camera system, then we added all the other systems of radios and so on. uh to make it a a working satellite. Uh leveraging consumer electronics, not exactly a phone, like we'd use in phone sat, but a lot of the same underlying chips. It's actually all of our own Boards.

and we would do tests of it, like radio tests across the whole of Silicon Valley, across to the Lick Observatory, where we'd have some people go over there with a radio receiver, take them a couple of hours to drive there, we'd stay with the satellite, and then we would test the radios. Then we'd put the the whole thing on a balloon and take it to sixty thousand feet and really cold uh uh uh uh atmosphere and and take the pictures and things like that. So a very iterative approach. Alright, so you have Um so you've got some savings that you throw into into this company and you've got a prototype But then what do you do? It's it's two thousand eleven.

And I mean to get This off the ground. Tate's cookies that's been on the show or Stacey's Pita Chips like you know, or or kombucha. Like you need millions and millions of dollars to start your company. Help me explain what you then once you have a prototype, what do you then do?

You know, w Will and I uh as we were talking about when we first went to Nassa Ames One of the first things we did was set up that mission design center to then design new missions and so forth. And all of this was was a new mission. So we we could we could understand how much money we think it's gonna cost, what the schedule looks like, and all of this stuff. But instead of asking for a hundred million dollars, right, in order to actually build out the whole thing, where actually at that point in time we thought twenty million would do it, we said okay, let's just Get a satellite in space.

And just take a picture. Just prove that one node can kind of work. Alright, here's my question. Ha why did you need to prove this concept? If you had already essentially tested,

When you work for NASA. PhoneSat didn't take exquisite imagery, remember it's just a phone camera floating around in orbit. To take quality imagery, we were really gonna have to add a telescope. That was a a really high quality telescope to take pictures. We're gonna have to add a high resolution camera. Uh you know, I mentioned our mission was to image the whole earth. That was designed because we wanted to be able to see a tree,'cause we thought, Well you can't stop deforestation if you don't see all the trees every day and see one being knocked down. And so we didn't know for sure we could see that tree from space. Um the physics said it should be possible, but it wasn't completely obvious and we had to design a telescope out of a material that wouldn't expand and contract with temperature otherwise.

uh the the camera would go out of focus. So we had to really put it in space,'cause that's the only way you can really test it ultimately, is it gonna work? So just to be clear, you you the idea was let's test the concept. Let's get our prototype up into space. It sounds straightforward, but it but you gotta get into space. Yes. How much does it cost to put a something on a

On a rocket ship into space. At that point in time, um Uh there was the ability to hitch a ride to space as uh not the primary payload, but a secondary payload. That's is what we used to first get to space. Alright, so you could hitch

a ride for the small satellite uh on a rocket. that was already going up with other cargo. And I I guess I I should point out there's a there's like a whole industry that offers these kinds of services. And and I guess you guys ended up working with two companies to get your satellites.

launched there's an American company and then a r a Russian company you worked with. And how how much was this gonna cost you? Hundreds of thousands of dollars. Um hundreds of thousands of dollars. I think it was three hundred thousand dollars for the first one and it was about that for the second one, and we decided it'd be best to put one satellite on each of two rockets. To give a bit of redundancy. And these and by the way, these satellites weighed what, five, ten pounds? Five kilograms, which is about ten pounds, yes. Just the size of a a a loaf of bread. Got it. Okay. So you you sign up to get your satellites onto a rocket. But j just to be clear, it's not like um, you know, uh our our

Our arrival and departure times uh are ninety eight percent uh you know, that like If you're booking a date. on a rocket, it's not likely it's gonna go out on that day, right? That's exactly right. Um And that the the primary reason is because

The the thing that the rocket is delivering. They set the schedule. So if they are late. in building their satellite or they you know

there there's an anomaly that comes up and they need to spend more time testing something, they'll push out that launch date. Us as a hitchhiking like ride secondary payload. We are committed to that rocket. Whenever it ends up going. So all right, now that you had

Space on a rocket. What I and and and you knew that it was gonna happen this is two thousand eleven when you signed this deal. Did you were you now able to go out and raise money? So we decided to do the first two satellites. Two or three million dollars.

But we didn't have all the capital to Pay for those. Rocket rides in full. So Let me rewind just a tiny bit on one of the tests of phone sat.

the satellite project that we were working on at NASA. We met uh someone there who it's quite unassuming there called Steve Jovenson. Who As a venture capitalist. Um actually became the main founder of Tesla and SpaceX and and we met him, he'cause he likes launching rockets on the weekend and we were doing our NASA rocket and he was doing his um personal rocket. And um We took our test satellite.

And Uh around November. twenty eleven. We plonked it on his desk and we told him the plan. We said we're gonna put a hundred of these into space and they're gonna image the whole world. And it's gonna have all these commercial opportunities and it's gonna have all this impact on the planet.

Well you give us some money. We also attracted a couple of other investors And then we had our first money and December. twenty eleven. w when you when you pitched the idea to investors, I understand that you know they're th that you had

idealistic motivations which You know, m many um entrepreneurs have and that's Certainly continues, but you still have to appeal to people who want to make money. Um and so what was the how did you

explained to investors that they they would make a return on that investment. Like w how how how are you guys gonna make money for them? We actually had quite a clear view about this that It was obvious that the that this data had value to people. To help improve crops uh for farmers, to help Google get better maps. Uh to help uh

government's uh good but disaster response. There's obvious value in it. I mean Remember that If you went back and asked Google what their business plan was, they didn't have an extensive business plan. What they realized was that search would really help the world and And that had value and there was probably a way to monetize it. Uh similarly here, like the venture capitalists didn't have to believe that

There was value. They just had to believe that we were gonna be smart enough to then harness that somehow. Yeah, three point two million. We ended up having uh two hundred K uh we also had uh friends and family came in a little bit. So with that money, uh did you begin to staff up? Yeah, that's when we uh actually decided to move to San Francisco and and rent our first office, you know, we were in the garage until then. And uh yeah, we definitely started expanding staff and hiring people more formally and all the rest of it. And uh um started building these satellites.

And I guess eventually You had to set up a c like a kind of a clean room. to to build the satellite, which is a room with Like no dust and no contamination at all, right? Like it it's it's like beyond sterile. It's like s like crazy super sterile. That's exactly right. Um yeah, it and it it it allows for you to really control the if especially if you have sensors, you don't want dust on it and or any of that type of stuff. So it it it keeps it so it's almost like it's in space again, you know, you know, before it goes up into space, so it's actually really, really ready to be in space.

'Cause once you get up there you can't really wipe off the lens, right? So um It has to be totally perfectly clean. Yeah, you don't have a lens cleaner up in space. Like that lens has to be So clean and That's it. That's right. If you if you launch with that. spec on the lens, it's gonna be there forevermore. Actually exactly in in in many ways, though. This is one of the areas.

where we tore down some of the rule book. I mean For example, at Planet, we have what we call clean enough rooms. And You know, it turns out that you can have it slightly less clean and it's much, much less expensive. Absolutely. So um I believe it was less than a hundred dollars, which was a um

A deployable greenhouse that was bought at Target. Um then it had some um HEPA filters, so you know lot of people have this right now because of fires and because of, you know, covet and so forth, but those HEPA filters were we're able to then filter out the air and then push the clean air down.

So it was just clean enough. In order to test out The entire thing. I could tell you that like now we have much better clean rooms because it is worth investing in it when we know that it does work. But at the very beginning, we really just needed a picture from space. Yeah.

And just before you go to the launch you can blow off the optics with the A little airbrush and get almost the same. But having spent m millions and millions less, right? On those processes. And it's just one example of many of h how we've We've changed the way we do it. And mainly it's about a risk approach, which is

Just U assuming more risk per satellite. Okay, that one satellite has slightly more chance of having a dust on it. But we're gonna put more satellites up than we need, and if a couple have that, It's not the end of the world'cause we're gonna put up a hundred or more. That's something we can live with, whereas if you made have a space telescope.

wrong, and of course initially it was launched with a slight error in its optics and It was blurred. Then you really gotta fix it because Yeah, it turns out you can go in space and and wipe off the dust. That's very expensive way of doing business. Building. all these small satellites and then I guess around April twenty thirteen

uh it's launch time and and you've booked one satellite on an American rocket and one on a Russian rocket, right? Yeah. We have planned them to be six months apart. Um so that we could Take the results from the first one and if something went wrong, iterate the satellite and try and fix that before the second one. Except. Because you can't control the launch date.

And they ended up launching just days apart. And in fact. the two satellites got deployed within forty eight hours of one another. And we were like, What is the chances of that? And then it was suddenly a scramble to try and connect with both of them as they popped out of the of the rocket. And it's really critical time when the satellite pops out, we need to be action stations, you know, manning the ground stations, manning the mission control, and making sure the thing works. Well how quickly before you guys knew that. The satellites were working.

With one of them it was in within an hour and In fact, uh we got telemetry from it, a health packet basically saying, Hey, I'm alive, I'm doing okay. And that was already huge relief. And then within a few Few hours of that I I wanna say even just two. The next one flew over

that have been launched from a different continent and and also made contact. So what was the first I mean, what were the first images that you were getting? Funnily enough, the first image that we got was a forested region in Oregon. And um you know, the original idea was to count every tree in the planet. And sure enough, that was our first picture. I was asleep when we got our first picture in.

And Robbie, didn't you come and Wake me up with the picture. I seem to remember like at four A. M. or something. And we were just like In awe. 'Cause we could. See that the picture was in focus.

Yeah, taking a picture of this forested area. C individual trees. We couldn't believe it. I mean we were in tears. And we're like, Oh my God. We've done. Like we can do this.

We can do this. When we come back in just a moment. how that one photo of a forest in Oregon led to many millions more. Stay with us. I'm Guy Raz and you're listening to How I Built This.

Welcome back to how I built this. I'm Guy Raz. So it's 2013, and Chris, Robbie, and Will have finally proven that they can take a photo from space. Which allows them to go to more investors and say See? We actually know how to do this.

Now we had a picture. We could say Like we can definitely do it. It's just a matter of scaling this now. And of course building a business around it. When we had left NASA we'd said we were gonna image the whole earth every day. We had the team, as Bobby said, that could pull this off.

Technically. And uh in that year. We got much bigger funding around from Let by Uner. And he gave us a check for I think

thirty or fifty million, and that was a much more significant Adventure from there. So Just roughly, how much does each Does it cost as each satellite?

It's about three hundred K or just slightly less than that, two or three hundred K. It's nothing. A billion dollars. Yes. So so we're we're talking about A thousand times to ten thousand times. Lower cost than a typical satellite. That is why we've launched all of the now four hundred and sixty or something satellites that we've launched on thirty three rockets.

For less than the cost. Of a typical satellite. A lot less actually still. And one of the things that I I've read about your company, which I think is Actually pretty amazing is

You know that there's always a possibility. that a launch is gonna fail. Like it'll because there's so much fuel, there's so many moving parts And you're okay with that because Your satellites are so cheap that you could take the risk that

You know, if you know, if one of these rocket launches fails It's okay because another one will be okay and and you know, that's the price of doing business. We have been on thirty three different Rockets and three of them have failed.

But it's not a billion dollar loss for you, it's a it's a couple million. Exactly right. It's a bad day. It's a bad week. Yeah. You know? Um But it's not catastrophic for for our mission and for our business. And that that is by design. I mean I know that you've you've kind of solved the problem of of cheap satellites and they'll get cheaper and cheaper. Obviously as time goes on. But c is there a way to solve the problem of expensive rocket launches? Can you make is it possible to make rocket launches cheaper? Yes, it is the our biggest expense. So it was.

Um but it's our biggest capital expense. Th the rockets have in fact got cheaper. Just the last five or so years, they've gone down about fourfold. And mainly'cause of SpaceX. SpaceX with its reusable rockets has brought the price down, which is really uh quite a big deal. But I would say One thing that people often miss though is actually Even more.

Uh radical is that the capability performance of satellites, though. cost per kilogram, the cost per cap a given capability has gone up. about a thousandfold in that same period. That sort of change of a thousand X in five or ten years is is very unusual in history, even the uh model T Ford when it first came out was two to three times lower cost than the lowest cost car at that time and people were like that's a revolution. But we are talking a thousand X. A closer analogy for this is not the Model T Ford, but

The transition from the mainframe to to desktop computers. Big companies would have one or two computers, right? How countries would have one computer. It was the size of a a factory.

And now with the with desktop computers, suddenly everyone could use them for lots of more purposes. Space is undergoing a revolutionary shift right now. And that is lead leading to all these changes. Well in particular the biggest upshot. Is the revolution in data that helps us. To take care of the earth.

Alright, so We're we are in the midst of a not only not only a planetary crisis, a mass extinction. We know that. uh and and you both live in California and it you have a front row seat to um Some of what's happening. Um

Yep. So how I mean I understand how the the existing data can help us track some of these things, but But when you talk about making an impact in e in an even bigger way. Ha w what do you imagine? Is it is it more people using your

Your data and then making Yeah, well um, Let me just give you a concrete example. Recently we had the Dixie fire here in California. And the county of Pluma said, Hey, can we use your data? We want to track where is the fire?

So I think it's the biggest fire in California history. Biggest fire in California history. And they said, Where's the front of the fire? Where's the smoke blowing? Yeah. We could give them that data and then they use that to decide where to put people. Um for the firefighters. Also, straight after that, they were like my God. Can we just have all of that data so the all the time so that we can actually look where might the next fire come? And uh the

This data is relevant for Day to day decision making across the globe. That's exactly right. Um based on everything we can forecast out today. Um, we believe that um this is really going to help us Take care of our planet.

And you cannot manage what you don't measure. Okay, so you're you're talking about the the planet and crisis and and the need for m more data and and information. And and meanwhile Uh by the time this episode is released, you you guys will have literally gone public. on the New York Stock Exchange. And I wonder

what the thinking behind that was. I mean I mean one reason obviously is to bring in more cash, which Clearly, you'll you'll you'll Do and the other is to make a return for the investors w well, I guess those are the the two main reasons, right? Yeah, well there is a little bit of that, but it's mainly something else. Um so

We always intended Planet to be a standalone company. Planet is now ready. We did. Just over a hundred million in revenue last year. And that's a mature business at some level.

I mean I I Always think You know, our grandkids will be asking How did humans take care of the earth? Before you had regular images of it.

what effect you were having and where was the deforestation, where is are the illegal fishing? Where is the how is the harvest doing on that crop field, et cetera, et cetera. Before you had that. How did you even know what to do? So like how did you meet up before you had cell phones? You know, and you had to make all these uh more complex plans. Now we have that data that can help us to take care of the earth and Yeah. You can't manage it if you don't measure it.

So here's what I'm wondering about, right? I and I can't be the first person to to ask you about this. I suspect that there are safeguards built into what you do, but What I'm worrying about is I mean, this technology's amazing, right? We w which you made available to companies and businesses and governments and so on. But I can't imagine that there are

Th that it couldn't be used in ways that are They're not wonderful and bright and sunny and optimistic. Like I I know you talk about you've talked about how you could track you know. environmental degradation and you know, humanitarian disasters and and refugee movements, but But you also track for for m military intelligence purposes, like uh like looking at at missile installations or the location of

uh airplanes and subs and and the movement of people across borders and and and things like that and And I could also imagine it it could be used it it could be used easily. Uh by governments looking to Quash. dissidents and people who are trying to, you know

Uh to to promote human rights. Absolutely. Yeah, I mean the the uh uh uh we we we probably both have a lot to say on this, but Robbie and I have been thinking about this for decades. And The reason we had called our satellites doves.

Um was partly a little poke at the military that would call their satellites. Birds, but birds of prey. And we were like, No, they're on a peaceful mission. We actually have a very particular thesis about this.

The more information different countries have about each other's activities, including military activities, And more It's likely to be peace. And when when it's i historically It was when governments didn't know what each other were doing that it led to tension. So for example, when the US put missiles in Turkey and the Russians didn't know during the Cold War, it almost led to a war.

So actually we lean in to the security side. We work with Governments. And security agencies, military organizations even. And we think it's the right thing because we think it reduces tension. As long as we focus on one principle. Which is

Don't give that data exclusively. Would you give it to ISIS? Or Al Qaeda. No, it's banned. That's a great question. And And we have two

um checks. One is that we don't give it to any known organization on these embargoed lists. That's both countries like North Korea. or terrorist organizations or individuals. And then In addition, we have our own ethics committee. that reviews every case with the government and checks is is there some way in which this might bring civilian harm? And we have many cases refused

Uh to give data where we think that maybe the case. We had an ethics team internally before we launched our first satellite. And I anticipate over the coming years there they'll it will get more sophisticated as we have orders of magnitude more users and need to really think about um uh and be responsible for the the unintended consequences of this level of of transparency and this level of uh data on society. Th this is an important point. 'Cause I often times on the show I talk about

we hear from companies talk about mission and most companies have a mission, right? You have to have a mission to motivate people and for people to feel connected to what you do. The mission has to be baked in Doesn't mean mission chan ch mission can change, but it has to be baked into the company from day one. I think this idea of

Baking in an ethics team from day one is absolutely crucial. Right. I mean, I'm assuming that's how you thought about it. Absolutely. So Andrew Zoli, who's our chief impact officer, uh, you know, he he says that like Regulations tell you what the law Requires.

Yes. And Ethic tell you what your values Require. Yes. And um ethics is really more of a process.

So Any time there's a crisis, if you bring out your ethical framework. Then you can follow. A predetermined process that allows for you to look at it from different perspectives to then make a better decision. You know

Most of the companies that we Profile on the show. Pretty consumer products. They They tend to hit profitability y you know, in the within a four or five years. We we

profiled Moderna recently and and obviously that company took ten years, right, before they became profitable, I think they spent four billion dollars. Um what you do is very capital intensive. It requires a lot of money. To get Satellites up into space and

to process all the data. I think I think your satellites produce like fifteen terabytes of data a day, right? It's about double that. Um and and so you are not profitable. You haven't y you're not uh but but Is there a path to profitability a clear path to profitability? Yes.

It's absolutely clear. Um We already have Very clear. uh users in

At least for markets. in agriculture, where big companies buy our data. That's the biggest market we have. We also service governments. Um and then we help with Defense and intelligence customers? Where we help them to see new threats around the corner. And then um we also help

companies like Google improve maps. So we supply data to Google for their maps. They do huge numbers of requests to us. I'd like to update the maps online so that it stays up to date so your directions are up to date. Those are four use cases that are already working very well and they're growing very fast and um So we have very clear line of sight now on a growth path. Going just over forty percent a year for the next five years, we project, and uh

Uh that gets us to profitability in the next couple of years. I I I know we we we touched on this earlier. Um you you guys had originally moved into a for uh more than fifteen years and I think

Both of you are in your forties, you both I I think either one of you or both of you have partners in your lives You still live in a house together with other people. Like no judgment at all. Like I I'm super introvert. I don't like to live around other people except my family. But Can you explain this? Why

You you guys choose to live this way? Now? At this point in your lives. Mm. Personally, I l I love it. Uh yeah, we we live at a house with fifteen people. Wow. We have fascinating discussions about technology and society, philosophy. Sounds stressful.

Always d discussions all the time around the house. I just want to put on my slippers and like watch Ted Lasso. Well it is big enough it is a big enough house where there are nooks and crannies for you to actually read if you want to, or to you know be be be more social but what What I love about it is People are Are passionate. Um

They are They're conscious, turned on. Uh, and I I really do enjoy having that. that environment. Where you can push one another. I'm thinking of like the real world on MTV.

Like did you ever have to kick anybody out like they kicked out Puck from the real world? I don't know what that is, but um people listening will know. So we we communicate. We communicate through conflict. And

You know, we we have values and shared agreements. Um and people have moved out. They they they choose to leave. And some of'em have been more difficult conversations um than than others. Yeah. I bet. I bet. So

So when you think about You know How far you know you know, where you are now and w what you have up in space and what you're able to do. How much do you think that You know, that it has to do in

And we're just kind of reflecting on your journey to get here, which is Uh, which is why I asked this question, because some people think I'm asking by the way, some people think I asked this question, and I I think you know the question I'm gonna ask. 'Cause they want a binary answer like oh it's luck, oh oh it's skill. It's seventy two percent luck, and you know, thirty seven point eight percent skill, whatever. It's really a question.

That is is Designed to be reflective. Wh you know, where you've been and where you where where you've arrived to. How much do you think that has to do with how lucky you got and how much do you think it has to do with how hard you worked and how smart you were and

And all that stuff. Uh Will. Gosh, I mean it's not a This is a simple question to answer, but It was definitely right place, right time. I mentioned how When we s left Nassa to start planet, it was

a very much a stars aligned moment. It was just like, What? We have to do this. But I would say persistence is the biggest thing that comes through. It's it's not quite either what you just said. It was it's persistence and endurance. You have to keep going. Yeah, there there is a there is a drive and a motivation in the art of creation. You've gotta love it. Right. Uh you have to be okay not knowing and being on that edge and and right into that edge of being like um comfortable and over stretched. I I I always find that that's where the most creative things come from. And as Will said, like you get a lot of things wrong, you know, and and you as long as you learn from it. You have a safe space to allow for people to actually learn from it.

then that collective knowledge is actually internalized by the team and then you And then you take the next step again. That's Robbie Schingler and Will Marshall. Co-founders of Planet.

Their satellites last about two to three years before they basically disintegrate, which is why. Even though Planet has launched more than 400 of these satellites, They only have about 200 circulating the earth right now. Still, that's the largest fleet of Earth imaging satellites in history. And by the way, one of the coolest things their satellites recently detected?

A fleet of World War Two ships that slowly washed ashore. in Japan. Hey, thanks so much for listening to the show this week. Please do follow us on your podcast app so you can always have the latest episode downloaded. If you want to contact us, our email address is hibt at npr.org.

And if you want to follow us on Twitter, our account is atHowIBiltThis, and mine is at guyRaz. Our Instagram is atHowIBiltThisNPR, and mine is at guy.Roz. This episode was produced by Liz Metzger with music composed by Ramteen Arablui. It was edited by Neva Grant with research help from Claire Murashima. Our production staff also includes Casey Herman, Farah Safari, JC Howard, Juliet Carney, Carrie Thompson, Elaine Coates, and Harrison Vijay Choi. Our intern is Catherine Seifer.

Jeff Rogers is our executive producer. I'm Guy Raz, and you've been listening. how I built this. This is NPR.

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