Ashlee Vance is a Tech Journalist, the author of Elon Musk's 1st biography in 2015, the host of "Hello World" on Youtube and the author of "When the Heavens Went on Sale" as well as the accompanying documentary "Wild Wild Space" following 4 New Space companies. We nerd out on rocket companies, 1 rogue NASA administrator, and the time I got to meet Vladimir Putin years ago.

Sponsor: OpenCage

Use OpenCage for your geocoding needs with their API
Geomob

About Ashlee:

• Twitter
• Bloomberg Profile

(Note: Links to books are Amazon Affiliate links. I earn a small commission if you buy any of these books.)

• Ashlee's books:
  • When the Heavens Went on Sale (Affiliate Link)
  • Elon Musk biography (Affiliate Link)
• Wild Wild Space documentary
• Hello World with Ashlee Vance on Youtube
• NPIC book by Jack O'Conor
  Book & Podcast Recommendation:
• Sonic Wind (Affiliate Link)
• Cocaine & Rhinestones

(00:00) - Intro
(01:33) - Sponsor: OpenCage
(02:59) - Ashlee Describes Himself
(06:12) - Chasing weirdos around the world for a living
(11:22) - The man shaking NASA in the 90s
(16:18) - Following Chris Kemp & the beginnings of Astra
(24:30) - Planet co-founders: Will & Robbie
(28:58) - Needing to convince investors
(31:34) - Will satellite imagery ever get mainstream?
(34:50) - A tangent on the US Spy satellite program
(36:47) - Starlink
(38:28) - Privatization
(48:43) - Space Industry outside of the US
(55:23) - Russia's aerospace pride: The time I met Putin
(59:18) - What's on Ashlee's radar
(01:01:42) - People or Companies?
(01:04:01) - Documentary Reception
(01:05:08) - The business of documentaries
(01:08:27) - YouTube
(01:12:45) - Book/podcast recommendation
(01:16:08) - No iPhone?
(01:19:38) - Support the podcast on Patreon

• Support the podcast on Patreon
• My video on an introduction to satellite images
• Website
• My Twitter
• Podcast Twitter
• Read Previous Issues of the Newsletter
• Edited by Peter Xiong
• Find more of his work

Luke Fischer is the Co-Founder & CEO of SkyFi, a company that we'll describe in a few ways in this episode, but boils down to an Earth Observation marketplace. We talk about Luke's 20 year time in the military before getting into startups, why Luke is bullish on their approach and many more

Sponsor: SatCamp
SatCamp is a different kind of conference, from October 1st to October 3rd 2024, in Boulder Colorado

About

• Twitter
• LinkedIn
• SkyFi

Note: Links to books are Amazon Affiliate links. I earn a small commission if you buy

• Gabe -unit economics- Dominocielo
• Bill Perkins
• Die with Zero
• Silicon Valley No Revenue
• Book & Podcast recommendations
  • Freedom’s Forge (Affiliate Link)
  • BigDeal by Codie Sanchez

(00:00) - Intro
(00:50) - Sponsor: SatCamp
(02:41) - Luke describes himself
(04:21) - Getting into the satellite image industry
(07:13) - Risks starting a company
(10:16) - Don't start a marketplace
(18:22) - Racing to get customers
(23:08) - What is the Product in all of this?
(25:00) - What is the product that SkyFi needs to build today?
(28:17) - Who is this for?
(33:08) - Biggest pain points
(37:44) - The market's view of Earth Observation businesses
(45:00) - Pivoting from the military
(51:28) - Hiring
(59:12) - Raising big, early
(01:02:08) - Predicting the industry in 2.5 years
(01:09:05) - Consumer market?
(01:14:24) - Health & family
(01:26:05) - Community while all Remote
(01:30:25) - Book & Podcast Recommendation
(01:33:09) - Support the podcast on Patreon

• Support the podcast on Patreon
• My video on an introduction to satellite images
• Website
• My Twitter
• Podcast Twitter
• Read Previous Issues of the Newsletter
• Edited by Peter Xiong
• Find more of his work

Ben Strong is the Science & Machine Learning Lead at Earth Genome, an NGO working on the intersection of data, science & digital design. Most recently they've been working on Earth Index, an application built on top of Earth embeddings from foundation models. This conversation is the "so what" of Earth foundational model

Sponsor: OpenCage

Use OpenCage for your geocoding needs with their API
Geomob

• LinkedIn

Note: Links to books are Amazon Affiliate links. I earn a small commission if you buy any of these books.

• Ben’s blogpost on NDA sequencing for the Earth
• Earth Genome
• Earth Index
• Book & Podcast recommendation
  • Demo Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver (Affiliate Link)
  • Risky Business

(00:00) - Intro
(00:46) - Sponsor: OpenCage
(02:12) - Ben introduces himself
(03:28) - "DNA sequencing" for Earth
(13:37) - Not building another Foundation Model
(18:06) - Earth embeddings: So what?
(21:49) - What does locally finetuned mean?
(25:48) - Invite only for now: Why?
(29:31) - Journalistic applications
(31:59) - Yet another tool for finding images?
(35:09) - Deciding what to work on
(38:35) - Designing for simplicity
(44:14) - So, why hasn't Google made this?
(51:18) - Funding
(59:54) - Book & podcast Recommendations

• Support the podcast on Patreon
• My video on an introduction to satellite images
• Website
• My Twitter
• Podcast Twitter
• Read Previous Issues of the Newsletter
• Edited by Peter Xiong
• Find more of his work