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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

#101

Post by counters »

teamga wrote: post #32

Weather alerts?

Even more complicated and less obvious than some of the other sorts of Earth observations that the author talks about.

I could write about this all day, but I'll start with the obvious: you're competing against a forecast that may have been made 30 minutes ago, an hour ago, 6 hours ago, 24 hours ago, or sometimes even more. So in some cases, at best you might be alerting people that something they already expected to happen is, now, actually happening. How useful that is depends on the context. Detecting a wildfire as it ignites? Cool - but most likely, if it's near an urban area, people already saw the smoke, or people were already ready to react because a Red Flag warning was posted. Lightning strikes? Folks already heard the thunder, and hopefully would've seen a risk of thunderstorms in the forecast earlier in the day or prior.

Carefully and succinctly incorporating narrow weather observations into existing forecast and alerting systems as a way to buttress them, decrease noise/boost signal, or otherwise capture a tiny bit more value than what was already there might work. But beyond that I struggle to see massive amounts of value for most of the use cases that many industries or communities wrestle with regarding weather alerting.

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

#102

Post by palata »

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…

Where does a system like https://picterra.ch/ lie? They seem to provide a way to tune algorithms for your images. Are those "algorithms nobody want", or is that helping niche use-cases (by allowing customisation)?

Disclaimer: never actually used their system, just saw presentations about it, which show how one can train an algorithm to count... stuff.

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

#103

Post by JumpCrisscross »

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.

> its not just Planet that is hung-up on this same failed business model

There’s a new one like every picosecond.” It’s “delivery, but for dorm rooms” for space tech.

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

#105

Post by Frost1x »

campchase wrote: post #78
mmaunder wrote: post #57

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.

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 reference.

If you can assume the scene you're capturing is fairly static over time, you can sometimes sort of cheat physics a little bit (keeping space constant and leveraging time) by resampling areas multiple times from different perspectives and cleverly combining that data together

Problem is that most the interesting bits people want more data on are quite dynamic in space and time, not just time. Even when it's not you don't gain linear subsampling improvements and eventually get diminishing returns with such approaches.

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

#106

Post by moralestapia »

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…

The problem I have experienced first-hand is basically that

>individual farms might want to look at relative growth rates of corn in their fields, or soil moisture levels, etc.

a LOT of people want this, but they would never pay $x,xxx/month for that, ever.

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

#107

Post by sandworm101 »

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…

>> but any one algorithm only serves an extremely niche audience.

Forget the algorithm. They need to fix their customer service, their sales process. Customers want pixels, but they need basic services: simple and a predictable price. I want to give a location (pix+radius, four corners or whatever) and a delivery schedule (once a week etc). But when I try to buy that stuff I get package deals, "ask for a quote", and vague statements about times. That doesn't work. Normal customers, ie not intelligence agencies, don't want a drawn-out negotiation process. The first company that can provide a basic web interface for purchasing imagery quickly and piecemeal will win the market.

Top of the list for small customers are probably high-end real estate agents. They want to monitor their neighborhoods for houses that are under delayed construction or backyards/pools that are being neglected (sure signs of someone ready to sell).

Civil litigation attorneys: I want everything you have about this particular intersection. Cops: I want any images you have of this house between these dates. News agencies: There is a Russian ship on fire at X location. When can you get us an image? And a great many other small customers I cannot think of at the moment.

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

#108

Post by countvonbalzac »

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…

Thanks for the reply! I'm curious where you draw the line between derived data and a full application for something like modeling climate risk for insurance?

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

#109

Post by murderfs »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #100
enriquto wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The problem with space imagery is that almost everyone who wants it has a niche use case But this is a good problem. It's like saying "the problem with motors is that everyone who uses them has a niche use case" (submarines, cars, airplanes, industrial machinery...). Or that "the problem with microscopy is that everyone who wants it has a niche use case". And indeed it does! Microscopes for biologists are different…

> like saying "the problem with motors is that everyone who uses them has a niche use case" (submarines, cars, airplanes, industrial machinery...) This is a good analogy. How many companies say “I’ll build a sweet motor and then find a customer for it”? They don’t. They build the motor for the application. (More often, they build something close to the final product.)

That's only true in extremis: it's not even completely true of car/industrial motors! Companies like Cummins design motors that are used in all sorts of applications, e.g. https://www.cummins.com/engines/qst30

When you look at smaller motors (e.g. DC motors in handheld consumer products), they're basically jellybean parts targeted towards the highly specific use case of making a shaft turn.

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

#110

Post by n8cpdx »

moralestapia wrote: post #106
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…

The problem I have experienced first-hand is basically that >individual farms might want to look at relative growth rates of corn in their fields, or soil moisture levels, etc. a LOT of people want this, but they would never pay $x,xxx/month for that, ever.

The imagery is often already captured, so if I want to give Maxar $250 I don’t see why they wouldn’t take it.

Eos (iirc it’s been a while) actually let me buy some imagery, but they would only give me pictures, not actual georeferenced rasters.

The actual manipulation and use of the data, even for machine learning, is pretty straightforward these days with ArcGIS. So yes, I want pixels.

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