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

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• 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
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• 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

Ib Green led the development of 3D visualisation tools like for example Uber’s deck.gl and is now working at Foursquare, after having started Unfolded, which Foursquare acquired. During this conversation we touch on how browser based visualisations are changing

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

• Kepler.gl
• Deck.gl
• Foursquare
• Kyle Barron
• Peak Math

(00:00) - Intro

(00:41) - Support the podcast on Patreon

(01:43) - Ib describes himself

(02:33) - How lb got to where he is today

(07:47) - Uber's need for visualization tools

(15:11) - Why do companies build open source tools?

(17:46) - Open source to open governance

(23:41) - Starting a company

(26:31) - How Unfolded generates revenue

(28:28) - Nerding out on browser based visualization tech

(35:11) - Client side rendering challenges

(39:27) - Competing against the smartphone

(41:38) - Looking ahead

(47:43) - Book & Podcast recommendations

(50:24) - 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