Building The World's Most Powerful Satellites w/ Will Marshall | EP #90

14 Mar 2024 · 1 h 10 min

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Podcast Summary: Building The World's Most Powerful Satellites w/ Will Marshall | EP #90

Overview In this episode of "Moonshots," host Peter Diamandis interviews Will Marshall, the Chairman, Co-Founder, and CEO of Planet Labs. The discussion centers on advancements in satellite technology, the journey of building Planet from a garage operation to a public entity, and the implications of satellite data on global ecosystems and sustainability.

Episode Highlights

  1. AI Revolutionizes Satellite Technology (11:56)
  2. Satellite technology is rapidly evolving, with artificial intelligence playing a crucial role in data processing and interpretation.
  3. Marshall emphasizes that Planet has transitioned from being solely a space company to a data-centric company, gathering immense amounts of information from satellites to monitor changes on Earth.
  1. Will's Exponential Journey to Success (21:47)
  2. Marshall shares his background, transitioning from a NASA scientist to an entrepreneur.
  3. He reflects on the founding of Planet Labs and the challenges faced, including securing funding and developing technology.
  1. Groundbreaking Rocket Launch Technology Improvements (39:15)
  2. Advances in rocket launch technology have significantly reduced costs and increased the number of satellites that can be deployed.
  3. Marshall discusses the potential for future satellite constellations and their applications in various industries.

Key Concepts

Planet Labs

  • Mission: To image the entire landmass of Earth daily using a fleet of 200 satellites, providing real-time data for better environmental management.
  • Data Utilization: The company aims to empower individuals and organizations to make informed decisions regarding natural resource management and sustainability.

The Future of Satellite Technology

  • Higher Resolution and Frequency: The vision for the next decade includes achieving higher resolution imaging and more frequent data collection.
  • AI Integration: The use of AI to analyze satellite data will facilitate real-time monitoring of environmental changes and support informed decision-making.

Impact on Industries

  • Agriculture: Satellite data can improve crop yields and decrease the use of fertilizers by providing precise information on soil conditions and crop health.
  • Sustainability: Planet's technology aids in monitoring deforestation and other environmental degradation, helping to enforce laws and protect ecosystems.
  • Peace and Security: The technology can be used to assess the impact of conflict on infrastructure and agriculture, contributing to humanitarian efforts.

Key Takeaways

  • Data as New Oil: The episode emphasizes the value of data in driving economic and environmental decisions, likening it to oil in terms of its importance to various industries.
  • Endurance in Entrepreneurship: Marshall highlights the importance of perseverance in the entrepreneurial journey, noting that significant achievements often take years of dedicated effort.
  • Meaningful Impact: Entrepreneurs should focus on projects that address substantial global challenges rather than pursuing ventures primarily for profit.

Conclusion This episode presents a compelling narrative about the transformative power of satellite technology and data in shaping the future of global sustainability and resource management. Will Marshall's insights serve as inspiration for aspiring entrepreneurs and innovators looking to make a meaningful impact on the planet.

For more information, follow Peter Diamandis on [X](https://x.com/PeterDiamandis) and check out Planet Labs for details on their satellite technology and initiatives.

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Transcript

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0:00I'm NFL Lineback at Tijayawatt and this is my personal best. YPB by Abercrombie is the active wearer I'm always wearing. That's why I reached out to co -design their latest drop. I work with designers to create high -performance active wear that holds up to my toughest workouts. Shop YPB by Abercrombie in -store online and in the app. Because your personal best is greater than anything.

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1:05Building a system that makes humanity able to smartly manage resources, a bit like the eye system with the visual cortex helps humans make smart visitors. It's art inspiring and it's important people understand what's coming. So I think of it as awareness to action. That's the phase change that we're going from. and action requires detailed tools and information that's timely and relevant to your day -to -day life. And just like the mainframe computer to desktop evolution, it's gonna change the whole dynamics of what's possible in space. And this is just the beginning. Everybody, Peter here, welcome to moon shots.

1:42I'm here with a dear friend. May I say an old dear friend? We've been friends for over a couple of decades. Dr. Will Marshall, Will, good to see you buddy. Yeah, no, so listen, you are, you've got a massive moonshot and it really, you know, when I think of you, I think about raster scanning the planet. It's about being able to know anything I want, anytime I want, anywhere I want, and really understanding the vibrancy, the problems, the opportunities globally. So let's begin with a quick overview of what is Planet Labs and then I want to get into what is your 10, 20, 30 year vision for Planet Labs because it's audacious and it truly is a moonshot.

2:30Yeah, well, certainly. Planet in short is a company we have 200 satellites that image the entire landmass of the earth every day. So it's a bit like if you go into Google and click on the satellite imagery layer, except that image is typically a few years old. We've got today and yesterday and the day before and the day before, basically 2 ,500 images now on an average for every point of the landmass of the earth. Documenting immense change going on and powering AI tools to sit on top that enable us to take smarter care of the planet, resources upon it. But in many ways, we started as a space company, now we're a data company.

3:20And that's the cool thing that's going on now. Space company is less about the rockets and the satellites, and more and more about the data and how it can totally transform the Earth economy. And that's the sort of exciting phase, we're in. And I guess, you know, as a public company now, the company's name is Planet. It used to be Planet Labs back in the early days. Salt River was Planet. And it's amazing. You know, we're gonna talk about the stories of how you went from literally a phone satellite to now 200 satellites. I think the largest imaging, private imaging collection of satellites. Maybe the NRO has more, I don't know, maybe they use yours, who knows?

4:00You've got more than the NRO and more than the governments. Yeah, amazing. That's awesome. And the credible journey, I mean, buying satellites from Google, getting Eric Schmidt and Larry Page and Sergey Brein, the entire group there and Steve Jervitson, one of the most incredible venture capitalists in the field to back you as a 20 -something -a -road. So I want to tell all of that story. and it really the ups, the downs, and the audacity of the moonshot you not only planned but built, but I wanna go someplace else first because I've heard you describe this and it's awe -inspiring and it's important for people to understand what's coming.

4:44What is 10 years from now, 20 years from now? What's your vision of what planet is doing and what's possible for humanity with the tech that you're building? Well, look, it's a big question, but I really think that we have the tools at our disposal now to manage the planet in a very different way. We've got a lot of challenges, the climate change, and we can talk about biodiversity loss and all these things, but more broadly, we're on a spaceship huddling around the sun. And we were taking data of it once a month, once a year. And how the heck are you managing that? It's a bit like, you know, I think we were having a conversation with our grandmas and like, then they'll say, hey, how did you manage the planet before you measured it regularly?

5:38Of course, the answer was not very well, you know. And you obviously can't be a smart actor without data. I mean, as a space geek, I tell you a little space story. You know, when you put satellites into space, you obviously try to measure them faster than the timescale they change. Like if they're spinning around once a minute, you better measure that spin faster than once a minute. Like if you take a 8 .1 minute, you ain't gonna stop the spin, right? You need to measure it faster. We are all on a spaceship, 8 billion astronauts, hurtling around the sun, and we have an impact on that planet on days and weeks' time scale of human activity.

6:20How do we manage that if we're not taking information, if we're not taking data points on that sort of time scale? So it stands to reason that you can't help the planet without that sort of data. As they like to say, you can't manage what you don't measure. So the vision in many ways is to give everyone the tools that a neighbor's ask to make smart day -to -day decisions based on the physical understanding of what's going on the planet. I actually did a TED talk which extended it just beyond just the imagery of the earth. It's the AI on top that then the neighbors you sort of have a query with Earth.

6:57This is in 2018 and you know in what modern parlance, there'll be like planet G .P .T. you know what is it that you should just be like you can text search the internet and text now in in in human readable form if you're like what's going on and give you human readable answers you should be able to do that for the earth. How many trees are there being cut down the Amazon? Where are those trees? What's the plot versus time, what's happening in my neighborhood? Who's doing what? Why, where's, how the park's doing? What, how do they need help? What do we need to do to clear up the pollution? Why is, where's the pollution come from?

7:39You know, all these challenges, humans should be able to have that at their fingertips and without having to have a PhD in space satellite imagery processing in order to get that, right? Just like we are doing again. And so, you know, AI companies have figured out how to turn the text of the internet first into a searchable place. That was Google. And now into this human readable way of interacting with it. I love Planet GPD. It's a fantastic, it's a fantastic term. You should put that out there more. So I love the idea that at any time you can query what's going on on the surface of the your, um, and get an answer and, and do it at a variety of spectral information and resolutions.

8:32So you have 200 satellites today, roughly, yes. With it. Um, what do you know, if you were, you're setting your, you're a moonshot entrepreneur, you know, a decade from now or two decades from now, what do you imagine to create planet GPP where you've got information at a regular basis at high resolution. What do you want to get to? What's your vision? Well, on the data side, I think we're going to, in the satellite piece, we're going to get more and more accurate data. So higher resolution, small, little pixel side. What's the resolution today? Well, our daily scan is at three meter resolution.

9:13Our highest resolution imagery is at 50 centimeters. So we have a sleet of 20 satellites that can zoom in anywhere and actually it's kind of fun to think of it Like how the human high works, which is you have peripheral vision in much of your visual field You only have high resolution in a tiny bit in the center and And actually it's black and white beyond a certain point in your peripheral But you're very good to change detection and if there's something changes your visual cortex goes hey guys Get that high res over here and then you turn your eyes to your head, right? So we have the scan, which looks at the whole peripheral at three meter resolution, the whole planet, and then we have the higher res that can zoom in on any particular piece of the changes.

9:54So we call that system phobia a bit like the, inspired by the eye. And the visual cortex is, of course, the AI that looks at the scan, finds the changes, finds what's interesting in the changes, blocks out everything else, and then coordinates what we should do as a result of that, including taking higher resolution imagery, but also make indecision at the state of the day. Oh, that's the threat. This is just a cloud. You know, no big deal. And so think of it that way. I think we're building a system that makes humanity able to smartly manage resources a bit like the eye system with the visual cortex helps humans make smart decisions.

10:32Do you remember calling me during COVID one night? Really excited. I think I just had a power average in the home. And you're on the phone giving me your vision of where, I guess, now calling a planet GPT where was going. And I was just, it was the most compelling vision I've heard about both giving our children the tools to manage the planet, but it's also a multi trillion dollar business opportunity. Can you dive in a little bit more? So do you think we'll have thousands of satellites? Do you think we'll have higher resolution? Yeah, I think I think it will get more and more real time and higher resolutions.

11:13So maybe, you know, we'll definitely get sub -meter daily scan, but I think we'll get more like hourly, maybe less.

11:23We'll also have other spectral bands. So we talk about going up in spatial resolution, temporal resolution, how frequent they and spectral resolution, how many spectral bands, and that's less usual for the human eye, but it's an absolute field day for the algorithms, because they can use different colors to distinguish between things. I mean, even down to, I mean, we're just about to launch some hyperspectral satellites that have 400 spectropan that enable us. Literally, you can tell not just that it's good green car, it's a green car that comes from this factory over here, because that's the only factory that produces that shade of green, you know?

11:57And you can also look at what the oil reserves are of a country by virtue of the thermal heating of the oil tanks because you said you can do the levels of the tanks, we can even do that today. But even one of the most wicked problems of the earth is where's all the life, what different forms are where? We can actually tell species type of the trees or the grasses or the coals underneath the sea, down to certain and that and so on, all automatically. And so this is a field day, as I said, for AI, because it can pull out all of these things, right? And help us understand, again, the planet. So it's, we're both trekkies.

12:40And so when the Starship Enterprise, sort of goes into orbit around the planet and it's Captain Kirk, you know, tell Spock to scan the planet. And he says, we got these mea life forms here. I mean, that's basically what you're enabling. Totally. Totally. Now, I mean, talk about the idea of what industries and businesses this enable. So can I just paint the picture one second? So thousands of satellites, yes? Yeah, I think that's right. Yeah. Thousands of satellites with each satellite has how many sensors on it? Yeah, a few. I mean, this doesn't need to be many. I mean, this may need to be one telescope, but different spectral regions, yeah.

13:22And all of this is being fed into a data layer that's being able to, is constantly being analyzed by AI. Yep, right. I mean, so this is about early detection of disasters. It's about early detection of opportunities. It's about discovery. It's science. It's definitely industry. It's hedge funds, managing hedge funds. It's everything. I mean, go, go, go, go. give me an understanding of how big this opportunity is. And how does it change the way we do business today? Because it's massive. Well, I mean, information is power. I mean, the economist said data is the new oil. It's the thing that's going to power all the industries.

14:06By the way, when a little fun fact, if you look at all the tech giants of what they're doing with AI, they're all open source in the AI code. They're all open source exactly to zero of the data. because the asset that they have that's unique is always the data, not the algorithm, or less the algorithm from the data. And that's why, you know, so when you think of where to invest in an AI company, who's got the interesting data? Because that's going to be where you feel. So data's the new oil. It powers all the industries. Hopefully it's like dirty like oil, but it is analogous in the sense that it powers all these different energy.

14:42Oil's powers all all these different industries. Data is gonna power all those industries as well. If you're in transportation, it's gonna make more efficient transportation. If you're in agriculture, it's gonna make more efficient agriculture. If you're in government, it's gonna make more efficient government. If you're in, you know, you just race across all the things. Yes, hedge funds, insurance, you know, and I can get more concrete. Let me give you a couple of specific examples. I think of the world as, you know, broadly undergoing three transformations today. One is digital transformation.

15:10That's the transition of industries to help them digitize, bring their systems into information world, such that they can then be more efficient. The second is sustainability, and we've got to transition to have a sustainable economy. It doesn't blow up the boundaries of the planet. Obviously, it does so in a way that we don't have further heat than the planet and so on. And the third is we've got to do all of that with having good peace and security, geopolitically. And what we need for all three of those factors is transparency and accountability of what goes on. So everyone needs to know and understand their supply chains, for a supply chain risk, for security for sustainability.

15:57But let me get a little bit more concrete. Digital transformation, take agriculture. We image every farmer's field on the earth every day. That's roughly a quarter of the lamest of the planet is agricultural lam. Every single farmer's field we can tell in each three -my -three box what crop is it? Is it corn, wheat, soil? How well is it doing? What practices the farmer used and what they should do where they should add water? The soil is too dry, we can actually tell the soil moisture level. Is the crop in need of fertiliser the herbicide or not, is they putting too much so that it's causing runoff that you could then save in total, we think that we can improve crop yields by at least 20 % and decrease use of fertilizing and other things and other inputs by 20 % as well.

16:45A 40 % increase to efficiency of a trillion dollar sector, that's a big deal. I could go through industry on digital transformation. Then there's sustainability transformation. Here, we need to help ourselves to manage the planet. I'll give you an example from just last year. Brazil, we do a weekly image of a scan for new roads starts in the Brazilian Amazon, the whole Brazilian Amazon once per week. And if we find a new road, it's a sign of early sign of either a legal deforestation, because they put in these logging roads before they then then get a treat, or illegal narcotics, or illegal mining.

17:31We provide these weekly alerts to the federal police in Brazil. They go out, they sent last year 3 ,000 expeditions based on our alerts, where they, and they were, are in total reduced deforestation in Brazil by 55 % in one year on the back of this system, and they confiscated $2 billion worth of assets. I hope you had a commission on that. What we kind of did, yeah, I mean, that was hard to say. It wasn't actually done that, but I mean, there's great ROI. And so that's sustainability transformation And then peace and security is where we help countries like it was happening in Ukraine right now We are we did a building damage assessment across all of Ukraine helping everyone to understand what's it gonna cost to rebuild We did an assessment of where the crops and how well the crops are doing for food security for that country and also for the world Because it's a bread basket for the world We did an assessment of how the Russians are stealing grain where they're taking it to you know There's all this stuff that we can help operationally and it's a broader humanitarian sense and finally also in terms of hearts and minds.

18:42Every time Russia says, oh, we don't bomb civilian targets, we have shared with the New York Times where they bomb civilian targets that last, you know, the schools and the hospitals. It's accountability. But we can share this because it's not a classified system owned by the NRO. You know, we can share that data with News Media where it's appropriate to shed light on what's going on and hold those actors accountable. This is transparency because of accountability. And so these are the three major areas we can help on a couple of specific items. I love that. I speak about the fact that people behave differently when they're being watched.

19:20That you put a camera in front of the dictator and the dictator changes their behavior. You put drones over poachers going after a nocerist and the poachers go away. And so this is complete and total transparency and forced accountability. I remember you speaking about a vision of the future of like brand new layers of Googleable data or you know Geminiable or Chatchy Ptable data where a school kid can literally can and go and discover whatever they want. Can you speak a little bit about that information layer on top of the planet and what that means? Yeah, I mean, I think that's right. The way I've already think about it, actually, and you've taken it more into this consciousness realm, I mean, when humans went to the moon and looked back and saw the earth, we helped up level human spirit to say, hey, we want a planet, it's fragile.

20:27It made to face change in human consciousness. The inlay of atmosphere protecting us from the vacuum of space, the coldness of space. That's, you know, it was daunting, but it helped sort of get burst to the green movement. I think we're on the verge of living. It's, we've got a big mirror to look at ourselves in the face. That webcam is, it's more of a mirror and back to ourselves, right? And with that, it's less about, we already aware that we're on a planet, that now it's enabling us to take smarter action, because everyone can see everything, right? So, I think of it as awareness to action.

21:07That's the phase change that we're going from. An action requires detailed tools and information that's timely and relevant to your day -to -day Anyway, going to your journey for a child, think about the exploration that can be done on this planet. But I love sci -fi, like you do, you're talking about Star Trek. But sci reality is fucking amazing. It's great. It's right around here. I get to, I barely get time for sci -fi because there's so many sci facts that I just get boggled by. The earth is full of those. You look around a planet is constantly changing. I look at our imagery every day and you see rivers changing.

21:48You see people harvest things, you see boats move, you see all this stuff happening. The earth is dynamic. We have this false impression. The earth is a static way. Because we were used to mass, whether it's online or physical. That's not how the world works. The earth is dynamic. What an exploration. Go, go, go, go, pile in. Everyone, it's Peter. In a few weeks, I'm gathering an incredible group of AI leaders, including Ray Kurzweil, Eric Schmidt, Mustafa Sullyman, Emaud Moustak, Michael Sailor and others at my Private Abundance Summit to discuss the impact of AI on our lives, our businesses and the world.

22:28The Abundance Summit is a private community open to extraordinary moonshot entrepreneurs. It's singularity universities' highest level program, and it's not for everyone. If you're at the top of your game and you want to learn more about this program, click I'm the link below to be considered. Okay, let's go back the episode, enjoy. Forbid listening, Will is an extraordinary moonshot entrepreneur, an exponential entrepreneur, and we met each other in the space community. God, what were the space gen conferences? Yeah, I mean, I think we met in 1999 in that Vienna conference, and then 2001, 2000, 2001, I don't know, we definitely met in, I think 1999 was when we went to the States.

23:11Five years ago. Yeah, that's pretty ancient at this time. I don't know. I still feel good kid And you're in you're still playing with toys so but they're world -changing toys and I want to dive into the journey right I keep on reminding people that you know these moonshots that entrepreneurs are taking are not overnight successes there typical overnight successes after 10 11 years of hard work exactly and and And I want to go back to your story. I'd like you to share the story, the ups and the downs and those pivotal moments. And just to put some numbers on it, Planet was founded circa 2010, I think.

23:56And then you went public in 2021. So you can go and find Planet, Planet's on the top of my ticker list on my phone. You can go find Planet on the NASDAQ. And it's now 2024. So it's been a 14 year journey from start up to today and amazing what you built. But let's go back. So you and I met each other again, back on the campus of NASA Ames at Singularity University. And what was that formative moment like for you and your co -founders? Yeah, I mean, the thing that had happened was that my colleague at NASA had kept on holding up his phone. This is an early smartphone in 2000. Was it a Google phone?

24:47I don't know, and in his specific case, I don't know. But he would say, look, this has got most of what a satellite has. If you think about what's in a phone, it's got cameras, it's got GPS, it's got rate gyros, it's got accelerometers, it's got processors, radios. I mean, it's just crazy all the stuff that is stuffed in here and it costs 500 bucks or 1000 bucks. Meanwhile, NASA is building these huge satellites. They also have roughly the same list of things, but they cost 500 million bucks or a billion bucks. And the quick thing, we were like, what are those extra six zeros? We're in for us.

25:26And I'm not saying that nothing. No one was saying is nothing. It's lower risk. It's bigger, you know, telescope. It's better sensor. But it's kind of remarkable how much stuff is bitten into this little box. And we wanted to leverage that. In NASA was very much in the mindset of inventing everything for itself, because you know what, it had to send in man to the moon. Well, we didn't have computers, so we had to invent micro computers. We didn't have, you know, solar panels, so we invented and so to that, you know, all that, we have to build everything on scratch. Well, guess what? The top R &D dollars aren't a NAS anymore.

26:00They're Google, Samsung, Apple, Mindset, all the way. And so this is learning to follow for the space industry, not a comfortable place for the space industry, you know? We're used to leading from the front. You know, we were a little bit annoyed by this, I would idea of having to follow. But the fact is that the billions of dollars that have gone into miniaturization of electronics was super useful for space. So this is learning to take those, stuff them into much smaller satellites, much lower cost, but have much higher cost performance. That is data per unit doll. And we estimate that that has changed orders of magnitude because of ours and others' efforts.

26:41I mean, at least three orders of magnitude. And that is a bit like the mainframe computer to desktop computer revolution, But for space and just like the main frame computer to desktop evolution is going to change the whole dynamics of what's possible in space And this is just the beginning we're seeing communication satellites and earth imaging satellites take off right but there's going to be others as well Better GPS navigation systems. You're going to see you know better radar systems better so many things are going to take off because of The fact that you've got a much more capability per dollar Also, launch costs have come down about 4x in the same period, so that has helped as well.

27:21Although a common misconception, I think, is that that's the dominant thing that's led to this. Actually, it's kind of the other way around. Satellites, miniaturizing, as a enable that asks to put much more capability per kilogram that's going up. That has changed the demand for going up, which enable us to bring the cost down. I would say it's much more that way around than the other way around. We still benefit and they add on to one another. But the thousand X in the space industry, this happened, is not to do the launch, it's to do with the miniaturization and increasing capabilities performance of satellites per unit dollar or unit kilogram.

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27:57Exactly. Yeah. The specific performance of satellites has gone through the route. That phase change has enabled lots of different applications. And most of them in the field of some sort of data, because you'll remote, It's all about collecting data or transmitting data and just in the last five years We've seen more than a tenfold increase in amount of data from space and more than a tenfold increase in the amount of data around orbit because of with Communications satellites enable in communication and one side of the planet the other that's a total Revolution that ten X in both of those areas.

28:28So the upshot of the space revolution is a data revolution so but there what there was that moment was it Robbie? Who was your co -founder at that time? I'm really Chris Boschhausen. Yeah, and both a great, amazing, how old were you guys when you were in? So we were late 20s, and when we started that, and we were like, okay, so phones, they were, let's put them in a vacuum, let's stick them on the side of a block. I remember that conversation. I remember you were saying, we stick this thing in a vacuum chamber and see if it still works afterwards. Yeah, we did. It was funny because, I mean, that's like going back to the womb for these guys, because actually all the electronics are made in a vacuum.

29:09You know, that's what people don't appreciate. And they're made like, I mean, little brick shithouses, these things, you can probably still work. They fell out of airplanes, they land. Well, that was so hard. I mean, they're kind of robust. So we stuck it on the side of the rocket. It also still work. We eventually put three into orbit. I almost got fired by Pete Warden because I hadn't really got all the things in a row to do that. I remember that. I didn't know that we ever doing this and kind of freaked out when they found out. But we were like, no, this is going to be cool. We're going to show that we consume an electronics, can work in space and that can change the whole classic version here.

29:50So yeah, we launched three fans into space. They've worked. They were tumbling out. So I want you to back up a second here. So you have the idea. You and Robbie and Chris Stark was it Planet Labs at the beginning? Yeah, well no, this phone project was at NASA. This was an internal NASA project. So a government funding just to see, and by the way, I like, yeah, I mean, yeah, stolen work hours if you would, nights and weekends. And so you send up three and it works. They were. And then they're tumbling around, take a picture. We got, yeah, people with yaggy antennas all around the world picking up the packets because we don't have ground stations.

30:29They send us the packets, we re -config these pictures and we're like, okay, we take a pixel space for a few thousand dollars, not a few bazillion dollars. So, okay, this is kind of interesting. Maybe we should leave NASA and do something like this. I mean, the camera's on this, wasn't the right kind of images. It was more proof of principle. It's a proof of principle that the technology could work in space. So then, yeah, we left NASA to start planet, actually it's initially called Cosmogia. a few years in. And we launched the answer. Where'd you go first? Was Steve your first investor then? Yeah, so he was.

31:07And we started building and launching our first satellite. We put the deposit down on a rocket with our own pocket money, which was a, there was an entire is rocket. And we just put them on. One on an entire one on a Soyuz. We wouldn't be popular these days. We're not meant to use the Russians. but then we could and we did and so we put the deposit down but there's no way we're gonna afford the main cost of the launch and so we will I always shit we need to get some money. That was when I was reminded because when other times we were launching one of these phone sets it was in the Nevada Black Rock Desert right away burning man and when there's not burning man there's sometimes rocket, amateur rocket ears go up there and launch things into space because there's a very high spree game.

31:56Space, so they can do that and of course there's no one around. And so we were up there and Steve was helping us to put our rocket together or something. I didn't know who he was, but he blogged about what we did the next day. And that was when Pete found out about our phone set project and almost fired me because he was like, why just read you guys are putting phones in his way and we're like, okay, It's going to be fine. For those who don't know Pete Warden was the head of NASA Ames, he was a general in the Air Force. He was part of the Strategic Defense Initiative back in the 80s under Reagan.

32:34A dear, a co -conspirator in the entire spaceflight revolution and a dear friend. He had a... Yeah, and because I'm a bit of a piece loving hippie that prefers peace in space, not SDI in space. I think I won because he was working at NASA. He says he won because I work for him. Well, something like that. Yeah, Robbie, Chris and I decided at this point, let's spin this out as a company. We took our core spacecraft team. We replaced everyone at NASA first, because we wanted to do good by NASA. And we took our core team. Steve kindly having routed this out. He went to him and said, come on, you got to give us the money for this.

33:15And he was like, okay, you guys are just crazy enough. I have only done one space investment before. It just year to earlier invested in SpaceX, the first non -ANDA SpaceX. Steve, one of those brilliant venture capitalists on the board of SpaceX had been on the board of Tesla and has the most magnificent space collectibles collection of Russian and NASA components and hardware and meteorites and everything. Yeah, he's great. How much did you get in the first round? Remember? Oh, that was, yeah, three million C. Then he led also the A, which is another 12 million I want to say. But then I also had some participation from other people, certainly the C.

34:03He led the first two, and then the B was led by Yuri Milner, 50 million, no, Epo in 30, all 50 was I think. And then the C round was stated collective, and international finance, cooperation, and a bunch of others. And then the round was essentially instigated because we bought the satellite arm of Google. Google then became a lot of that. So slow it down. So during that time, it's the night of the satellite. Yeah. So in that window time, this is 2010, the 2016, 18 timeframe. Both of us were close friends with Larry and Sergey and Eric Schmidt, where you were on the campus there of NASA Ames, which is where Google keeps their airplanes, and I had singular university there.

34:54And talk about sort of the first time you connected with Google Guys and start talking about orbiting satellites and things like that. Yeah, I mean, well, it was a little bit random. In 2006 or 2007 when I first got the aims, I like hiking on the weekends and I hiked from my house where we started planning and did the first satellite in the garage to the sea, which turns out to be quite a hike and I haven't really exactly planned it out with my girlfriend at the time, about 80 kilometres, 50 mile hike, two days from there to the sea. So basically over the mountains, to Big Basin and then down to the sea.

35:32By the time we got there, there There was only one bass a day and it left. We just missed it. Cell phones didn't work there because we're in middle of nowhere. So we get to this beach and we're like, damn, how exactly are we gonna get out of here? And my girlfriend was basically divorcing me at this point. So that's a bad plan. Anyway, so we can't be down to this beach. And I say, well, I hope these guys are friendly because there's three people on the beach, kite surfing. One of them turns out to be a friend of mine who is a wonderful guy and helped to teach Sergei and Larry to kite surf. It was the other two people with Sergei and Larry.

36:15When they came in off their boards, I was like, oh, hi, Don, great to see you. Can you give me a lift, huh? He was like, no, I'm not going your way, but these guys are. I'm in the car with my girlfriend in Sergey and Larry who are giving me a ride home now. And they're like, can you stop, can we stop for dinner? I was like, of course, sure, there's, there's stuff for dinner when you get chatting. And, and, and my girlfriend's like, what do you guys do? And they're like, we work at Google. How they put it. I was like, wait a second. Their name's Larry and Sergey and they work at Google. Okay. I think I know who this is.

36:50And she's like, well, what do you do exactly at Google? and they're like, well, you know, set board strategy, I was like, I'm kicking around to the table going, I think these are the guys that started it. Anyway, it became friends with those guys early on and they got very interested in space. It came round to see our Luna lander, a demo to do, see some of the missions that we were, like the one we slammed in the South Pole of Moon looking for water, they came round for even though it was landing in the middle of the night, two or three a .m. and they came, yeah. So they were interested in that stuff.

37:20So they followed. This is where sometimes serendipity and good luck plays a hand. Yeah, and I go, so you start planet and Steve invest. And when do you start sniffing around the fact that Google had satellites? Well, they bought a terabella or sky box imaging, which became terabella. I want to say in 2015 and so they bought that to start a satellite arm and they actually were sniffing around us too at the time and we wanted to say separate and they bought this arm and well we thought it was fine and they were going to do that and of course there's a little bit competitive. There was Skybox at that time was the sub one meter resolution image.

38:09That's right. These are a larger, much more expensive satellite ones. I was saying it was zoom in because then subsequently Google decided not to continue that investment and spin that out they came and approached us and Eric who is then an investor Had had suggested that we have a discussion on that and we did and then one thing led to another and we ended up Buying this like arm not for for cash Google has plenty of cash and we had very little so it made more sense for us to give stock in in exchange for those assets and then Google game and shout out. Hey everyone, I want to take a quick break from this episode to tell you about a health product that I love and that I use every day.

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40:12All right, let's go back to the episode. Do you still call the smaller satellites, Dubs? Yeah. They'll love it. And describe those small satellites. Yeah, they're about this big. They weigh about five or seven kilograms. So, you know, 10 or 15 pounds. They spread their wings out to solar panels. They're solar panels, exactly. Yeah. And they chop a little bit from there. Actually, we get data rates of two gigabits a second. There were a thousand kilometer range from our little radios now. That's amazing. What altitude are you flying at? I mean, people need to know the lower the altitude, the better the resolution, the better com rate, but the degradation you degree in orbit.

40:56Oh, right. Because what's your trade there? Yeah. Well, our trade is we choose about three year life. Our thinking is that just like you don't want to three year old thrown in your pocket, you don't want to three year old satellite in space. It starts to become obsolete. And just the same, actually, really every, we've launched on average four times, we've launched 35 rockets over 500 satellites. We launched on average four times a year. And every time we're iterating the technologies to make it better and better, just like every time you buy a new phone has got the bigger camera, a better hard drive, whatever, we're doing the same and we call that strapping space to Moore's Law to make it better and better in that place of data per dollar, which is the vector we're trying to optimise.

41:43So we've seen a 10 ,000 fold increase from our first satellite, so I'd like to say in in terms of data per dollar. That's incredible. I mean, that is a Moore's Law. And are you mostly launching on SpaceX these days or? SpaceX, we've launched on 35 times on 10 different rocket vehicles. But indeed, SpaceX and the PSLV, I think SpaceX has been our most common one of all. PSLV is India, right? And we've launched on other vehicles as well, the European Vega, the US Atlas, others. And when Starship starts, I mean, you could launch all 200 at once. No, we could launch like 10 ,000 at once. It's crazy.

42:32Yeah. Yeah, no, it's crazy. I mean, I do worry about the A380 problem with that. It's not clear that there's yet a market for that vehicle. is not impedance matched with people's ability to build satellites yet. The only satellite fleet that can fill it up at the minute is really Starlink itself, but then that doesn't help, you know, they're only their own customer. Do you feel, I mean, the planet used to have the biggest, baddest, most satellites in Ireland? The largest satellite fleet, but Elon came over and did more. Yeah, I know, it's Calde -Neu. They're bigger satellites and he's got more of them.

43:13I'm pretty outweighs by this. No, it's good. Look, we're all obviously trying to do things to help the planet. And I commend what they have done with Starling. It's, and the Rockets, of course, the reusability. I was a doubter on that. I thought the reusability was too hard and he did it. Well, I mean, even I have both been for the last 25 years space cadets and it was always the holy grail of reusability. Yeah. I mean, it was repulled off. Yeah, and he pulled it off. Yeah, it's an incredible. We all see this as Elon, of course, it's a huge team. And but Elon, of course, has been inspiring later for them to do that.

43:50You know, this past three years, we got Elon to fund a $100 million gigaton carbon removal ex -price to try and stem the tide of the environmental destruction. And you have become an extraordinarily outspoken individual on the environment. And I think part of what you're trying to do with planet is give us the tools to measure the planet in a way that allows us to hold companies, individuals, dictators, nation states responsible for the impact they're having. because despite the borders that exist, they don't prohibit the free movement of pollutants in CO2. So it's talk a little bit about that.

44:43So if people listening are not convinced or need some persuasion on the state of affairs, give us your best shot. Now, I mean, look, from our 10 ,000 -foot view, or in our case, 400 -kilometer view, we see the whole planet, and I see it evolving. The facts are start. And humans have obviously manipulated the planet. We've got two big problems. The one that everyone knows about, and the one that everyone doesn't. The one everyone knows about is climate and how we are emitting too much CO2 and it's warming the planet and obviously we're having extreme weather events now that's exactly what the scientists have said.

45:35It's the first thing you get is that and of course sea level rising, whole nation states being wiped out. The second is biodiversity loss and this is where we're wiping out ecosystems of life. And you might think, well, why does that matter to humans? I mean, they're just up there, some whatever, some animals in the jungle. Why is it matter for us? It matters for us because it is estimated that half our economy depends upon what they call nature services, which is that the trees and the soils and the mycelium and the plants clean our water and they clean our air and they do all these things. And we don't have the industrial capability We don't have the technology.

46:23We are fully dependent on the rest of life. And in the last 40 years in my lifetime, we've wiped out 70 % of the life on the earth. 82 % of wild mammals gone in 40 years, 75 % of fish in freshwater rivers and lakes gone in the last 40 years, 70 % of insects gone in the last 40 years, 70, 66 % of birds, over half the coral reefs, over half the forest, all gone, and we think it retrieval ble going. And we think we can do that without there being consequences for us. We are so familiar. And what is driving that is deforestation, overfishing. It's human pollutions from agriculture into rivers. It's all these sort of things.

47:17And that is just a big problem as climate change. And they couple, of course, to make things worse. Now the Amazon is not any longer a net CO2 sucker, because of the climatic events. And then that means it's more likely to fall over as an ecosystem. We are dealing with a complicated system. Humans need to reforest a lot of the land. we need to stop our overfishing, we need to do these things. And there's things humans, individuals can do for this. We've got to reduce our intake of meat, which is what drives 70 % of deforestation is for cows. We've got to reduce our, of course, use of fossil fuels and those things.

48:10And we've got this things we could do to help as well, like helping in our local parks, the plant trees to help rewild local parks. I'm involved with a project that is just rewilding an area about 1 ,000 hectares, north of San Francisco, to try and bring back the native ecosystems after over usage, both mining and over cattle usage of an area that wiped out most of the natives. It's hard work. And I wanted to understand what it takes on the ground because we're trying to help people through satellite imagery all over the world to do this conservation effort. But yeah, no, the situation is is somewhat tragic.

48:47What I would say is we have wicked problems and we have wicked tools to go help them. And our aim at planet is to help provide everyone those tools. Let me give you an example. We are trying to to a sustainable economy. For that, we basically have to measure nature and carbon and put it into our economic system. At the end of every year, every company and every country on the planet is gonna need to balance its carbon books just like you balance your finances. And just like during that, the first step is measuring where the carbon is. Whereas in your lifetime, you can all do a personal carbon budget.

49:28You find that flying around is probably the worst bit as I did. But you need to balance that budget. Well, how do you offset your carbon of your flights or whatever? Well, you can grow trees, you can change transition farms to sustainable farming practices. Well, how do you know that's happening when you do that? Well, you need satellite data that can do that. We just launched just a few weeks ago. It's one of my proudest launches for plan A moment, as moments is not a rocket launch, but a launch of a data product called Forest Carbon Planetary Variable. We are measuring the carbon across the whole forests of the earth and helping to quantify how much carbon is in the trees.

50:14And we're actually doing it at three by three meter level every quarter and going back 10 years. And that means pretty much that each tree will be able to how much carbon is in the tree? Why does that matter? Well, it matters because if we're going to have carbon markets where Microsoft say, he says, I want to offset my carbon of all my execs flying around. And some people in the Amazon say, well, will plant some trees or stop deforestation in my area? Somebody is to act as the bridge that says, indeed, they have done that. And how much carbon has increased, right? You need a carbon economy. And we've been lacking that.

50:49But it all depends on this tool measurement. So you make possible actually an exprise I've wanted to do for a while. I've wanted to do for lack of a better term the Trillion Trees exprise, which is any team can register and can claim a plot of land where they're going to plant trees. They've got to have permission from the land owner, could be a government location, so forth. and we measure, and hopefully there are thousands of teams in 100 plus countries around the world, then we measure who wins. Now, one wins by getting the most, but there's this massive long tail over the course of a decade.

51:32You know, I'm a fan of your prizes, because I think they incentivize innovation as well as much more capital in than the prize give as give, it's kind of amazing, happens. Yeah, I think you could even do it by carbon. Of course, you have to restrict it by, And there was a mistake a little bit in New Zealand where they tried to do this based on carbon. And then everyone planted pine trees, which turned out to be fastest at adding carbon. But they were not native. They hurt a lot of the other species. And then when the wind blew, they all fell down. So you have to do the right kind of trees. But yeah, subject to certain caveats, you want to incentivize people to do that.

52:06Also, to restore existing forests, you people are taking a few trees out or so. Yeah, and the idea is to be able to measure that, to underpin carbon markets or carbon prices kind of the same. Love it. Will we have a lot of moonshot entrepreneurs, people who've got big ideas or I dare call exponential entrepreneurs. Could you mind sharing some of your lessons learned? Like, in some of the challenges or problems or like, you know, what was it that led you to this extraordinary success of building this. And now as a public company, CEO and a company, frankly, that has 100x growth potential as you measure the world.

52:52It's huge. It's a data company. It's an AI company that uses satellite technology. But the journey could not have been easy. What were some of the lessons learned? What's the advice you have for entrepreneurs out there? Well, look, I think the biggest thing is that it takes time, grit and endurance. A lot of people list all the things that differentiate good startups and bad startups with the right idea, the right timing, all these things. I'd say by far the biggest one is endurance. You put it to me once and it's one of the most salient pieces of advice they ever received. And it was to do with your project on the first X -Priest, the Ansari X -Priest.

53:38You said for eight years, no one noticed what you were doing, basically. No one really could figure it out. It would maybe, I remember you showing me a little clip from the LA Times that was like this big on page 40, how proud you were that somebody had, it was something like that. And I was like, wow, you know, Peter's great. And then two years later, it was from page of every headline on the planet. And the exponentials are hard to understand. And the humans don't have good intuition for it as you've explained many times. And so towards the end, you get a bigger fact that you can do as the Silicon Valley adage goes, you always underestimate what you can do in the year, sorry, over estimate what you can do in the year and underestimate what you can do 10.

54:28It takes 10. The Safe Pisa advice, I should say, is the thing you said, it takes, because of that experience, it takes 10 years to do anything meaningful in the world. 10 years. Yeah, you had 11 years from, come up with an idea until the company went public. Expri - It's 10, 12 years. You're tackling a problem that asks, actually, you're going to have serious impact in the world. Not just a frivolous thing. and it's not going to happen any year. It's going to happen in 10. So, wow, you know, that's just a reality, I think. And it's huge rewards for it, but you have to stick with it. And the number of people that tell me no, you know, I can't even count, right?

55:16I mean, no, you can't do it. No, you can't have money. No, there's no business. No, there's no, you can't build this. I like blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So, you know, I like to keep going, you know, and our team had to wear the through that, right? And that's, it takes a certain sense of endurance as well as as idea and timing and all the rest of it, which obviously you need to, but and luck, whole, whole heap of luck, right? I mean, you know, I mentioned the Sergey and Larry thing, I mean, what the heck? Right place at the right time. And like, so some of that just, I'm gonna say luck comes from perseverance as well.

55:55I just didn't get out of long enough. Totally, totally, and to take risks, right? So, yeah, nothing ventured, nothing gained and all that. So I definitely would say you've got to stick with it. The other thing I would say is tackle something that's meaningful in the world. Life's too short. Don't ever start the strategy that looks like this. I will do this thing, which doesn't sound that interesting. Cool tech, but really the main thing is I'll get rich and then I'll be a philanthropist to give the money away. It's such bullshit. I agree. It's ridiculous. It's that vote with your feet, do something usual every day.

56:35Don't wait a few years until you're rich and after then do cool stuff. Do cool stuff with your feet. You know, I gave it to Augustine for the rest of the... Come on, that is this. So I have a basic test for that. If you should be able to... Whatever your idea is, you should be able to look at the UN Development Go, the Sustainable Development Go, and check a few that that project helps. And if you can't, if the answer's a null set, you should be looking seriously that idea, you know? And let me be honest, like there's a lot of apps in Silicon Valley that maybe you have no other companies, no more photo sharing apps, please.

57:16Yeah, exactly. What the heck? That may make money. And it is perfectly waste of time. And I used to think of this as like, Okay, well that's cool. Different people do different things, and that's helpful. Except when you think about all the challenges of the planet, we can't waste loads of the best engineers. This is what gives me pain about a Facebook right now, and I don't need to pick them out, but I don't see, it's not clear, it's net positive to the world. And again, you could say, well, it doesn't matter. Cool, staff, cool tech. I'm sure some interesting tech will come out of it. There's definitely good, but there's definitely bad.

57:51it tells the rooting information ecology with you know echo chambers and stuff. But I think it's much worse than that. You are putting 40 ,000 or whatever it is engineers who aren't solving the world's problems. They're just helping us to share pictures. What the fuck? I mean there's people starving on the planet. I'm sorry. You know, just not where we need to be putting our time and resources when we have a half a billion people that are undernourished, a climate change challenge, biodiversity loss, all the problems that we have in the world. So life's too short. If it doesn't hit one of the big goals of the planet, don't do it.

58:32Yeah, the way I put it is if you want to become a billionaire, help a billion people, and the world's biggest problem is the world's biggest business opportunities. Absolutely. Absolutely. Everybody, I want to take a short break from our episode to talk about a company that's very important to me and could actually save your life or the life of someone that you love. Company is called Fountain Life and it's company I started years ago with Tony Robbins and a group of very talented physicians. You know most of us don't actually know what's going on inside our body. We're all optimists. Until that day when you have a pain in your side you go to the physician and they burn into your room and they say listen I'm sorry to tell you this but you have this stage three or four going on.

59:14And you know, it didn't start that morning. It probably was a problem that's been going on for some time. But because we never look, we don't find out. So what we built at Fountain Life was the world's most advanced diagnostic centers. We have four across the US today and we're building 20 around the world. These centers give you a full -body MRI, a brain, a brain vasculature, an AI -nabled coronary CT looking for soft plaque, dexascan, a grail blood cancer test, a full executive blood workup. It's the most advanced workup you'll ever receive. 150 gigabytes of data that then go to our AIs and our physicians to find any disease at the very beginning.

59:59When it's solvable, you're going to find out eventually. Mice will find out when you can take action. Fountain Life also has an entire side of therapeutics. We look around the world for the most advanced therapeutics that can add 10, 20 healthy years to your life. And we provide them to you at our centers. So if this is of interest to you, please go and check it out. Go to fountainlife .com, backslashpeter. When Tony and I wrote our New York Times bestseller, Life Force, we had 30 ,000 people reached out to us for fountain life memberships. If you go to fountainlife .com, Backslash Peter will put you to the top of the list.

1:00:40Really it's something that is for me one of the most important things I offer my entire family, the CEOs of my companies, my friends. It's a chance to really add decades onto our healthy life spans. Go to fountainlife .com, Backslash Peter, it's one of the most important things I can offer to you as one of my listeners. Alright, let's go back to our episode. So, you know, I'll close out with something else. We just landed on the moon, which is fun. First, private commercial vehicle to make it. And you and I have been lunates for quite some time. You were involved with Pete Warden on a few, shall we say, undercover unusual lunar missions.

1:01:29ARI51, let me just say. Yeah, to crash into the South Pole and image the leader poles looking for ice in permanently shadowed areas because ice is the Saudi oil fields of the moon, liquid oxygen and hydrogen. I just announced on a podcast, I went back with Bill Gross from Ideal Lab and we talked about the blast -off lunar mission we had worked on for a number of years. And of course, Google Lunar X Prize, a UR familiar of, we had 2016's, three made attempts. And Intuitive was the fourth team that made an attempt and it pulled it off. They stopped the landing. It was the hot. Yeah. Yeah. Amazing.

1:02:17It makes you proud. Now, wasn't quite the lunar rover in 1972 bouncing around with humans, but just like your phone sat has evolved. The evolution of what we'll see, especially a starship gets to the moon. It's going to be awesome. Are you still a lunar night over Mars guy? Oh, God. Yeah. It's not only a thousand times easier to put a settlement on the moon than Mars. Look, I mean, I think we've mainly got to pay attention to this planet, but I mean, the moon is inspiring to me. I think that it's a place where I would love to visit there and look back at how big the Earth is in the sky, four times wider than the moon is in our sky and see the continents and get that perspective that I think that helps people to understand our place.

1:03:09But practically and technically, it is just far easier than Mars because Mars has the annoying thing of an atmosphere which for space -faring species is really annoying. But it's only useful if you can actually breathe it which you can't on Mars. If you can't breathe it then it just makes landing and taking it up much harder. You still have the way of space to it. If you can't land and take it up. And the moon is one and a half or two days or three days travel time whereas Mars is eight months and you can go any day of the week which makes it big difference. 2 .4 second round trip by the speed of light.

1:03:42You can have a conversation. Exactly. You can have a conversation where as you can't amount, I mean, just the difficulty delta is orders of magnitude. Orders of magnitude. I think, you know, we did this estimate, this workshop where we're at Ames, where we estimate it. Even with Falcon 9, forget Starship, we, and by the way, Falcon 9 is perfectly adequate you could put a settlement on the moon with that we think would be self -sustaining, being able to do its core things of being able to mend everything that would break, that would be life system critical for a couple of billion dollars. What the heck?

1:04:23That seems like a reasonable why when we do that? I mean, it's something an individual can do, right? Yeah. Or a base -os. Yeah, some of our friends could do that and they wouldn't even notice it, Does it be from the MegaCount? Yeah. Yeah, I mean, look, again, most of our energy's got to be on Terraforma. We've got so many challenges, but it's inspiring and I think it makes sense that that sort of scale to have a backup plans for humanity. So yeah.

1:05:08Yep. Yep.

1:05:33busy the station Exactly. Yeah, if I could just rip off that, at least, it's a tool. It's a name, but it's an ecosystem for sure. There's no way we can do all the applications as one company, to help use this data, to help make smarter decisions, or help make lives better around the planet. There's just a billion companies that could be built off the top of this, that we, an application. So yeah, AI makes it easier as well. So you don't have to have, again, a PhD in satellite imagery processing to get to grips with this. This is a standard API. You say your A or I, your area of interest, your time of interest, your T or I, and then we'll just give you the data.

1:06:21Or even we'll give you analytic speeds, like how much carbon is in all the trees, or where all the ships, or whatever, and we'll just give you lat longs. And these things, this is getting easier and easier. And so I think we're successful only, not only we can enable that. We're only successful as planet. If we help companies to do that as an ecosystem, this is like the iPhone app store, but for building solutions to help the planet. I always want to say that. I want thousands of eco -praners, as Mark Benioff likes to say, of entrepreneurs that are focused on helping the planet, building off of the top of planet's data.

1:07:01But you know, I mean, in the, let me say one other thing, that we do have real, as I said, we've got wicked problems, wicked technologies to help solve them. I'm going to disagree with your abundance thing a little bit here. We have, some of those problems are so acute that I think that we're going to need technology solutions like renewable energy and better data solutions. And we're going to have to consume less material resources because there's no, that you can get more digital resources, but you can't consume more than we're currently consuming. It's eating the planet. That's what we're seeing, the mining.

1:07:38Even if you swap the renewable energy, for example, we're seeing all the mining for lithium for more batteries. In the end, we also just need to eat a little less, waste less, you know, we waste 45 % of our food. We need to conserve a little bit more on electricity and think that combination is what we're going to need to get out of here. It's a minute of smart use of our present staff, smart technologies like renewable energy and smart use of our present staff, including a personal behaviour level. We're going to have to change our behaviour a little bit. I respect the reduction in waste and I respect the increase in efficiency.

1:08:17And I think for the first time ever we've got the tools to begin to think through that and to do that. So listen, if you're a moonshot entrepreneur and you're trying to figure out your next gig, what would you do with an incredible information layer on top of the earth that is getting deeper and richer and accessible through APIs and AI engines? I can start imagining a whole slew of different startups I'd be doing so maybe a little bit of inspiration. Again thank you to you, to Robbie, to Chris for founding Planet. A real pleasure to have you as a friend and so proud of what you built. Thanks a lot Pedro.

1:09:02It's been a pleasure to have this conversation from here today.

From the publisher

In this episode, Peter and Will dive into satellite technology, what it takes to create a company like Planet, and its effect on ecosystems across the world.  

11:56 | AI Revolutionizes Satellite Technology

21:47 | Will's Exponential Journey to Success

39:15 | Groundbreaking Rocket Launch Technology Improvements

Will Marshall, Chairman, Co-Founder, and CEO of Planet, transitioned from a scientist at NASA to an entrepreneur, leading the company from its inception in a garage to a public entity with over 800 staff. With a background in physics and extensive experience in space technology, he has been instrumental in steering Planet towards its mission of propelling humanity towards sustainability and security, as outlined in its Public Benefit Corporation charter. Recognized for his contributions to the field, Marshall serves on the board of the Open Lunar Foundation and was honored as a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum.

Learn more about Planet
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