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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

#51

Post by campchase »

GlenTheMachine wrote: post #46

Me: 20 years in the defense space business. Stating my own opinion. This is basically right. The problem with space imagery is that almost everyone who wants it has a niche use case, and those few organizations without a niche use case (the US Weather Service, various militaries, etc) generally want imagery that's so specialized to their own problem that they have to spec, buy, and operate their own orbital assets. T…

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 audience.

Another analogy I use a lot: satellite imagery is like salt. The dish can have lots of ingredients (in a military context: HUMINT, OSINT, SIGINT, etc.) And the satellite imagery can make the whole dish. But you never want to consume it in isolation, that would be disgusting.

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

#52

Post by RosanaAnaDana »

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…

I can get not how this might get lost if you are looking at it from outside the industry. Realistically, Planet should be in the business of selling pixels in mass. However, Planet has decided that isn't enough for them, they want more of the value add. This is built into their licencing/ ToS. However, their black box analytic solutions simply aren't good enough. They never have been and if they arent willing to give you a full chain of custody of every assumption a given algorithm uses, it never will be. Any solution that isn't completely translucent isn't good enough.

If they wanted to be crushing it, lower the cost/ barrier to entry on the pixels themselves. Get it out into peoples hands and use more open, easier to build on licenses. Let people actually use the data.

I've been on the other side of 5 failed attempts to work with Planet at large, medium, non-profit and startup scale projects, as early as 2016 and as late as 2021. They just don't get it. If your data isn't easy to use, I wont. If your license is going to prevent me from building what I need to from that data, I wont use it.

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

#54

Post by RosanaAnaDana »

campchase wrote: post #43
campchase wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 busin…

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 ego and self interest is inextricably wrapped up in this debate.

Do yall have any plan to do work in the vis/IR space?

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

#55

Post by RosanaAnaDana »

campchase wrote: post #31
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 busin…

I'm in complete agreement with this point of view, with about 22 years experience in the remote sensing space, ~10 of that in private industry.

And its not just Planet that is hung-up on this same failed business model. Its also Hexagon, and a myriad of other earth-observation providers. Some are so difficult to work with its literally cheaper to go buy an airplane and a wide format camera and roll your own.

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

#56

Post by GlenTheMachine »

campchase wrote: post #51
GlenTheMachine wrote: post #46

Me: 20 years in the defense space business. Stating my own opinion. This is basically right. The problem with space imagery is that almost everyone who wants it has a niche use case, and those few organizations without a niche use case (the US Weather Service, various militaries, etc) generally want imagery that's so specialized to their own problem that they have to spec, buy, and operate their own orbital assets. T…

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 audience. Another analogy I use a lot: satellite imagery is like salt. The dish can have lots of ingredients (in a military context: HUMINT, OSINT, SIGINT, etc.) And the satellite imagery can make the…

That’s a good point: often the data product isn’t generated solely (or even mainly) from orbital imagery. Often it’s provided mainly from data the end user already has, and for which orbital imagery serves either as a cueing system (providing candidate locations which the end user will verify) or a verification system (providing final verification of locations the end user has already cued).

Certainly that’s true with eg the petroleum industry, and big ag.

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

#57

Post by mmaunder »

I want SpaceX to put cameras on their Starlink fleet and provide near real-time satellite views via a Google maps interface down to 30cm resolution across most of the planet. As they phase out old birds and deploy new ones this is feasible for them. Each bird already has connectivity. They just need the cameras.

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

#58

Post by charcircuit »

pseudostem wrote: post #5

>In my opinion, every supervised machine learning model is hopelessly biased by the intent of its creator(s). Namely, it inherits the bias of its training dataset (both geographic and semantic). Profound. And True. Sometimes I wonder whether we can truly call them learning models at all.

It's why they are called models and not just "how it works" or absolute truth.

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

#59

Post by altdataseller »

dylan604 wrote: post #49
campchase wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 busin…

Who are you to tell a company what they can sell. If they want to sell the raw data so people can do whatever they want with it, then sound reasonable. If they also want to sell data with some analysis already applied so that other people can buy that data because they don't have in-house for it and just want pretty pictures to put in the deck, then why not sell that too? You don't always have to order the biggie fri…

You can do anything you want.

The OPs point is that it won’t be profitable/effective, that’s all.

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

#60

Post by randomluck040 »

RosanaAnaDana wrote: post #55
campchase wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 busin…

I'm in complete agreement with this point of view, with about 22 years experience in the remote sensing space, ~10 of that in private industry. And its not just Planet that is hung-up on this same failed business model. Its also Hexagon, and a myriad of other earth-observation providers. Some are so difficult to work with its literally cheaper to go buy an airplane and a wide format camera and roll your own.

I would love to know more about the possibilities of Remote Sensing in the private industry. I‘m working in academia and have the feeling that I’m in an echo chamber all day every day and no insights at all. Any chance I can contact you or can you point me into a direction?
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