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The satellite imagery industry still has no idea what customers want

joemorrison.substack.com

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Re: The satellite imagery industry still has no idea what customers want

#31

Post by campchase »

countvonbalzac wrote: post #23

I'm confused what the author is trying to argue? 1. People don't want satellite data they want their problem to be solved So a company like Planet shouldn't (just) get satellite data they should solve problems. 2. Companies can't do 2 things at once well So Planet actually has to choose between solving problems or just getting satellite data 3. Companies like Arturo have good focus and solve the problem of climate ri…

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 data at the same time

If you feel like that doesn't make sense, you are not alone. Almost everyone in the industry disagrees with my views on this topic based on how they run their businesses. Satellogic is one notable exception. But I can't think of a single other provider that would agree with me.

Re: The satellite imagery industry still has no idea what customers want

#33

Post by campchase »

joeframbach wrote: post #10

This post seems to begin _in media res_. I feel like I'm missing a lot of context here. What exactly are we complaining about? Did some event happen?

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 repeat myself constantly, so for regular readers of mine none of what I outlined in this essay is news).

Re: The satellite imagery industry still has no idea what customers want

#34

Post by Eric_WVGG »

delusional wrote: post #26
theobeers wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think they were referring to their own startup ideas. (I was also momentarily confused because "downgrade" tends to be used in the context of investments.)

I think this might be a case of the "grind" mindset, where ones own time is also seen as an investment. Hence the investment lingo.

lol. Was I using investment lingo? How humiliating.

I managed to put together an MVP of a service that would push notifications for stuff like "tell me when my favorite musicians/novelists/artists have new consumable," all the while thinking "if any of these people were smart they would have done this a decade ago." Of course Amazon started pushing out the book stuff, and Apple Music with music, just a few months after I got the back-end APIs working.

uh, so yes… grind, I guess

Re: The satellite imagery industry still has no idea what customers want

#35

Post by campchase »

waynecochran wrote: post #30

I love this attitude: I am not rooting for people to fail. We’re building an industry together, not playing a zero-sum game Of course this is not the way many folks see industry competition. I think, for example, Intel, AMD, and nVidia can all "win." In fact, when one improves they can all move forward.

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 effort is going toward things like monitoring the effects of climate change, or mapping natural disasters in real time to support crisis response, or illuminating human rights violations around the world. Rooting against the people working on that is icky.

In my opinion, we're all competing against obscurity (who buys satellite data today?!), not each other.

Re: The satellite imagery industry still has no idea what customers want

#36

Post by 0des »

delusional wrote: post #26
theobeers wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think they were referring to their own startup ideas. (I was also momentarily confused because "downgrade" tends to be used in the context of investments.)

I think this might be a case of the "grind" mindset, where ones own time is also seen as an investment. Hence the investment lingo.

its not the grind minset, thats reality. time has a cost.

Re: The satellite imagery industry still has no idea what customers want

#39

Post by annoyingnoob »

campchase wrote: post #29
annoyingnoob wrote: post #3

I found the animated gifs distracting, it took away from whatever you are trying to convey (for me).

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, because that's what makes it enjoyable for me. But like all entertainment, it's stylized, so it will put some people off. Hopefully you found the content valuable, at least!

For me, its not so much the presence of animated gifs as much as I wanted to be able to scroll one off of the screen while I focused on the words. For me, the top 30% of the page had something moving no matter where I scrolled. I can appreciate style and levity but for me the busy screen was enough to drive me away. Looks my Reader mode would have blocked all of the images and should have just gone with that ;)

Re: The satellite imagery industry still has no idea what customers want

#40

Post by kccqzy »

mikestew wrote: post #13
Eric_WVGG wrote: post #7

> Allow me to put it more succinctly: selling derived data as a subscription product does. not. work. I don’t care what it is. The juice is never worth the squeeze.¹ Count cars. Count airplanes. Count ships. Segment land cover. Track oil inventories. Estimate biofuels. Measure water levels. Etc. Etc. Etc. I see that he outlined a few exceptions at the footnote… I'll also add Plaid. I think this guy is making some hug…

Fed Ex (quite surprising) have decided that freely providing delivery dates to consumers is too value to leave to third parties... ...or to leave to the shipping endpoint customer, either. I can't tell you how many clicks it takes to determine when a particular shipment will arrive at my door. Off the top of my head: 0. Email from vendor: "your package has shipped!" 1. Log in to the Fedex account. 2. One would think…

You don't need to log in or even create an account at FedEx just to track deliveries. You just need the tracking number. It's the first thing you see when you go to the homepage of fedex.com
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