campchase

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31.
by campchase 4y ago
Terrific company and interesting technology. I see them as an application making it possible for non-technical people to automate basic workflows. I’m skeptical that’s a big audience but low code/no code solutions in other industries h
32.
by campchase 4y ago
Yeah, this ultimately probably winds up being owned by one or more cloud providers. It’s also the most common business model I see startups trying to do. It usually doesn’t work because you can’t put lipstick (flat pricing, self-service sal
33.
by campchase 4y ago
LOL I need to look that up
34.
by campchase 4y ago
I would imagine major US/European cities are pretty well-served in this regard by annual and semi-annual aerial surveys. But that still leaves a lot of smaller cities who aren’t pro-actively covered by Nearmap/Hexagon/etc. Th
35.
by campchase 4y ago
I agree. The first time I wrote about this same frustration a couple years changed my whole life—it’s how I wound up at my current job and something I still believe in very deeply: https://joemorrison.medium.com/the-commerci
36.
by campchase 4y ago
Thanks for taking the time to write this out, great info. There are two hallmarks of an application that differentiate it from a data service: 1. Earth observation is a minority of the data that it manages and maintains 2. Users are not jus
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by campchase 4y ago
Great observation. Check out Descartes Labs (all-purpose platform) or Picterra (closer to CountThings for sat imagery) as two examples of companies trying to make it easier to build personalized models.
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by campchase 4y ago
Thank you, I will do that in the future.
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by campchase 4y ago
Unfortunately, physics won't allow for that - with optical instruments you need a big aperture (lens) or you need to fly much lower than Starlink, or both. 1 or 2m imagery may definitely be possible, though! Check out BlackSky for refe
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by campchase 4y ago
Interesting example! Planet sometimes describes themselves as "Bloomberg for Earth Observation" or something along those lines.
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by campchase 4y ago
No, but I'm close with Albedo who is pursuing the same strategy in vis and IR: https://albedo.com/
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by campchase 4y ago
That's very interesting, I don't know anything about the consumer data industry.
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by campchase 4y ago
I agree, the new title is way better. To whoever changed it: thanks!
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by campchase 4y ago
Thanks for the perspective, Glen. I've often heard this referred to as the "long tail" problem for satellite imagery providers. The area under the curve is enormous, but any one algorithm only serves an extremely niche audien
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by campchase 4y ago
Also, full disclosure, I work for a satellite imagery provider ( https://umbra.space/ ) where we're executing on the "just sell data" strategy, so I'm fully corrupted as far as seeing the Truth when my own
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by campchase 4y ago
That's great feedback, I will avoid .gifs in my future blog posts. I can see how that would be distracting and an accessibility issue.
47.
by campchase 4y ago
The satellite imagery industry is quite small in terms of the people who work in it. I love and respect the people who have built the same products that I am indirectly critiquing in this piece. This is a cool industry, because most of the
48.
by campchase 4y ago
You are right - I wasn't really writing it for a general audience, more for the few thousand people that are working every day in the commercial satellite imagery industry. There's no specific context to understand (beyond that I
49.
by campchase 4y ago
That is, indeed, exactly what I am arguing. Either: * Just sell data or; * Just sell applications powered by your proprietary source of data Do not: * Sell derived/refined data as a half-measure * Sell both applications and wholesale d
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by campchase 4y ago
I don't mind you saying this - I think my style is very off-putting to some. The same things that disenchant you about the style are what make others love it. I try to be entertaining and informative, rather than just informative, beca
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by campchase 4y ago
I sell satellite imagery. I want more people to start application companies, and less people to start data feed companies. "Preaching" is the most scalable way to try to convince people to change tack. I can't personally star
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by campchase 4y ago
Not broadly true in my opinion. To give an example from the financial services industry: * Satellite provider or analytics firm sells "car counts" for retail stores * Financial institution is intrigued; this must correlate with sa
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by campchase 4y ago
Thanks, Terry
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by campchase 4y ago
I agree-most of my observations here do not apply broadly beyond the satellite imagery. One of my favorite resources for learning how "data as a service" businesses work (when they work) is the "World of DaaS" podcast th
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by campchase 4y ago
Author here - not an original insight, although it's clichéd enough that I can't point you to where I picked it up from. I also want to emphasize that I do not view bias as a bad thing in the context of supervised models. In some
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The satellite imagery industry still has no idea what customers want(joemorrison.substack.com)
384 points by campchase 4y ago|212 comments
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by campchase 5y ago
I check this every morning. The best part is the contract announcement section imo. You can get a feel both for the pace of the industry and the changing customer base at a very concrete/low level after a couple of weeks of reading jus
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by campchase 6y ago
Do you think the other version is clearer, though? I think he’s right. I will probably update it.
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by campchase 6y ago
Interesting, I’m unfamiliar with Cassegrain reflectors.
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by campchase 6y ago
I sympathize. I sell stuff without a price tag all the time--it's the trap of having large, high-paying customers and trying to lean down to serve small customers. They're incompatible sales motions, and the effort to set up an en

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