1. Capella Space
We are providing low-cost SAR imagery satellite constellation with a high revisit rate.
Payam Banazadeh
Aerospace/Business
Timon Ruban
Machine Learning
Isaac Matthews
Aerospace
Jose Ignacio del Villar
Business
Will Woods
SAR
# interviews
this week:
2 users
3 buyer
10 experts
1 competitor
# total
interviews:
36
Redacted
5. Experiment #1 - dual-use case
Hypothesis
Experiment
Result
Action
Government funding is not the proper channel for Capella
Interviewed +5 experts and 1 competitor
Confirmed. It’s easier to move from commercial to military than military to
commercial. Finding strong supporters of the product is more important than getting
funding from the government.
We need to de-focus from finding “funding sources” within the government and
focus on finding folks who can champion their needs to VCs for us
6. Experiment #2 - Coast guard is a big customer and needs high resolution imagery
Hypothesis
Experiment
Result
Action
Coast guard is currently in dire need of situational awareness at high resolution
Interviewed coast guard
Size and inability to know what is going on in the sea is a major pain point. They currently use
“flight tracker”-app to aid decisions. Big ships are not the main issues, the smaller vessels (40-50ft)
are the main problem. Oil spill and SAR is what keeps them up at night
Pursue this question more closely with coast guard to understand the exact needs.
Specifically how often the small vessels need to be detected
“The sea is vast”
Redacted
Redacted Redacted
Redacted
Redacted
Redacted
Redacted
Redacted
7. Experiment #3 - Raw vs. Processed Data
Hypothesis
Experiment
Result
Action
Military customer desires access to raw data; commercial customers highly value
processed data for actionable insights.
Interviewed coast guard and other stakeholders within the government and
commercial sector
Everyone is trying to get new data but very few are working on analyzing that data.
Analyzing the data is extremely important when working directly with customers
within DOD.
Pursue this in more details with coast guard to understand what kind of analyzed data
they need; determine data flow to decision maker
Redacted
Redacted
Redacted
Redacted
Redacted
Redacted
Redacted
Redacted
8. • Deploy 1 to 3 satellites
and sell the images by
September 2017.
• Finish the deployment
of 40 satellites by
2020.
• Construction of
payload for testing
• Development of image
analysis algorithms
• Construction of
satellite under
required constraints
• Data Analytics
providers (Orbital
Insight, Omni Earth,
etc)
• Sponsors (military and
commercial)
• Satellite structure
providers
• Satellite component
providers
• Orbital
communication
providers
• Satellite launch
providers
• Get a customer in a country in the Equatorial orbit
(Government)
• Get commercial customers interested enough in our tech
• The DHS and other government departments adopt our
technology:
• - USCG: to thwart drug trafficking from Ecuador and Colombia
• Summer ground demonstration: $50k
• First satellite: $6 million (including operations)
• Subsequent satellites: $3 million each
• Final constellation: $150 million total over 3 years
• Funding to perform
payload test during
Summer 2016
• Government advocacy
for our technology:
DHS
• Contacts in the
Equatorial countries’
government agencies.
Beneficiaries
Mission AchievementMission Budget/Costs
Buy-In/Support
Deployment
Value PropositionKey Activities
Key Resources
Commercial
Satellite imagery resellers
Illegal fishing in Indonesia
Oil tankering in Nigeria
Stop pirating at sea in
Somalia
Key Partners
USCG
Law Enforcement DO
Information Watch Officer
USCG
- Stop more boats carrying
drugs from
Ecuador/Colombia
- Reduce the cost of drug
intervention operations
NGA
Provide better intelligence
to other agencies/services
Commercial
Satellite Imagery Resellers:
they can offer better and
more diverse products
Illegal fishing: tracking of
ships that are doing
suspicious activities at sea.
Better law enforcement.
NGA
Intelligence Analysts
Services in the DoD??
SOCOM
Government sector driving
demand (Indonesia, Nigeria,
Ecuador, Colombia)
Coast Guard Deputy
Commandant for
Operations (CG-DCO)
Redacted
Redacted
Redacted Redacted
Redacted
Redacted Redacted
Redacted
Redacted
9. Products
& Services
Run counter-drug
Operations
Catch “bad guys on
boats”
Customer
Jobs
- “The sea is vast”
-Low budget (=> cannot
deploy to many resources)
-Hard to know where to
look/patrol
Gains
Pains
Gain
Creators
Pain
Relievers
-Information on where boats are
in patrol area lets duty officers
deploy assets more
strategically and more
efficiently
-High revisit rate enables duty
officers to see smugglers even
on quick runs (3-5h)
- Stop more boats carrying drugs
from Ecuador/Colombia
- Reduce the cost of drug
intervention operations
Value Proposition Canvas - USCG Law Enforcement DO
-provide locations of
boats without AIS in
desired area (extracted
from SAR images)
-web-based UI
-modern machine
learning/computer vision
techniques can scan many
images for boats and cover
vast areas
-locations of boats without
AIS can queue where to
send patrol vessels/aircrafts
Redacted
Redacted
Redacted
Redacted
Redacted
Redacted
Redacted
10. Moving forward (week 3)
Meeting at Skybox
Meeting at Orbital Insight
Meeting at NASA Ames
Meeting (again) with coast guard
Redacted
11. Products
& Services
Deliver geospatial
intelligence to,
warfighters, intelligence
professionals and first
responders
Customer
Jobs
- Insufficient
knowledge (images)
of areas interesting for
DoD services
- Over-tasking of analysts
- Backlog of un-extruded
data
Gains
Pains
Gain
Creators
Pain
Relievers
- Global Coverage
- On-Demand SAR images
made possible by a high
revisit rate
- Data conditioning
alleviates analyst
tasking
- Extrusions may align
with current tagging
practices
-Receive high-resolution imagery
from arbitrary places on-demand
to make it easy to deliver insight
- ???
Value Proposition Canvas - NGA
-radar satellites
-high-resolution
SAR and InSAR
images
Redacted
Redacted
Redacted
Redacted
Redacted
Redacted
Redacted
We have reached out to our assigned mentors, sponsors, and military liaisons and are leveraging the connections of this network to provide critical insights to open doors to contacts in the Navy 7th Fleet, and the military at large.
Through our conversations, we have discovered that the US Navy and Coast Guard is interested in employing state of the art imaging platforms for wide area and continuous monitoring, specifically in the Arctic - SAR is a unique technology that affords the Navy and Coast Guard this capability.
We have additionally discovered that the private sector, particularly companies in the Arctic region involved with the commerce, transportation, and exploitation of natural resources, may have an interest in the technology.