Planet CEO Will Marshall talks Space, AI, and Where to find the Aliens?

1. 0:00 – 0:49

   Will Marshall, Co-Founder & CEO at Planet Labs

   1. MOMolly O'Shea0:00

      Data centers in space, so have you thought about this at all?

   2. WMWill Marshall0:03

      More than thought about it. We just launched last week the first test project for Google. Data centers is all an energy problem. In space, for each solar panel, you get five times more power than you get on the ground because you can put them in a sun synchronous orbit that is always looking at the sun. We're seeing two big trends in the world. One is the geopolitical changes that are happening, and the second is AI. We're seeing a lot of countries needing our data really quickly. The point is, information is power, and by giving it to these countries, we can help them diffuse tensions and make it more likely we don't need to go to war.

   3. MOMolly O'Shea0:33

      You're in beta with your AI app. So what are you doing in AI and how does that change?

2. 0:49 – 1:46

   “We go where the cool people are”

   1. MOMolly O'Shea0:49

      Will Marshall, thank you for having us at Planet Labs.

   2. WMWill Marshall0:53

      No problem. Welcome again. I mean, it's fun to tour downstairs.

   3. MOMolly O'Shea0:57

      Uh, we didn't mention this in the tour, which I think was a big miss, but we're in the heart of San Francisco right now. [laughs]

   4. WMWill Marshall1:03

      Correct. Yeah.

   5. MOMolly O'Shea1:03

      We're not in South Bay of LA, we're not in the middle of New Mexico.

   6. WMWill Marshall1:07

      No.

   7. MOMolly O'Shea1:07

      We are literally in San Francisco.

   8. WMWill Marshall1:09

      Yeah. Few people realize, uh, that there is a mass satellite manufacturing facility [laughs] in the middle of San Francisco.

   9. MOMolly O'Shea1:16

      So why did you choose this location?

   10. WMWill Marshall1:18

       Well, we were at NASA Ames, our founding team, just down the road, uh, near Mountain View, um, but we all wanted to be in the city where the cool kids hang out. So we came up here. And the same today. Look at the AI companies. Anthropic's a few blocks that way. OpenAI is a few blocks that way, and even the Google Gemini team, you think of Google being in Mountain View, but the Google Gemini team is a few blocks down the road. All the young engineers wanna be in San Francisco, so we go where the cool

3. 1:46 – 4:13

   What it takes to image Earth every day

   1. WMWill Marshall1:46

      people are.

   2. MOMolly O'Shea1:47

      So for people who haven't watched it yet, we just came off of a tour of your facility.

   3. WMWill Marshall1:51

      Yep.

   4. MOMolly O'Shea1:52

      Um, what did we just see?

   5. WMWill Marshall1:54

      Yeah, I mean, what we just saw was, uh, a manufacturing facility for satellites. We've made it way more automated, taken satellites the size of a double-decker bus and shrunk them down, you'll see some of them in the background here, and, uh, enabled us to be able to launch them m- many more and at lower cost. And, uh, with all of that, we have put up enough satellites to image the entire Earth every day, um, which is the first fleet that has ever done that. We launched the first satellite, set of satellites that grew to over 100 satellites, the first big-ish constellation of satellites. Now Starlink is a bigger constellation. Now, what is all that for? This is what we can talk about now. So, I mean, really, in the end, this is an information business. We're selling information. Why? Because we collect all this information about the planet and we wanna help people make smarter decisions, um, whether that's for agriculture to improve crop yields, for security to, for threats around the planet, for disaster response, for all sorts of, all manner of applications. Um, and the app- the addition of AI that we were just looking at means that more and more people can get access. But let me say in a big sense, um, we're seeing two big trends in the world. One is the geopolitical changes that are happening, the fragmentation, the changes to the geopolitical environment, and the second is AI. And huge, both huge forces. Now, space generally, and Planet in particular, are super relevant to both of those. Geopolitics is all about understanding threats around the corner, uh, understanding, um, what's going on, um, disasters and so on, and what better than information to help you understand that? And then AI is all about having better information. So we can dive into each one of those a little bit more, but basically, satellite data is critical to underpinning, uh, security, sustainability, AI, the lot of it. And so we're seeing a boom right now, which is why we're on this floor, which we've just doubled our manufacturing capacity here in San Francisco. And, and that's all because we're seeing a lot of countries needing

4. 4:13 – 7:39

   Why information is power in modern war

   1. WMWill Marshall4:13

      our data really quickly. Um, so let's go into that security piece of it a little bit. Take Ukraine. Um, we helped to see the troops build up on the border of Ukraine before, uh, the invasion happened, the full-scale invasion. Um, now, um, actually we help provide data to Ukraine to help them monitor threats well in advance of reaching their borders to try and stop those threats, to help them defend their country. I can't get into all of the details, but it's really at the core an information advantage. Um, they're facing a conventional disadvantage. Russia has more troops, more tanks, more missiles, more planes. But Ukraine has two distinct advantages. One is they really care about their country and they don't want it invaded, and the second is they have information advantage, and information is power. And they've been extremely active at using latest technology, drones, satellites, AI, to get advantage. So we've helped them as best we can with their incredible innovation. They've used and seen uses of our data in, in incredible ways. Now other countries are going to Ukraine and going, "What's going on here?" And they see that most of their satellite data comes from Planet, and they go, "Wow, okay, we need that too if Russia might invade us. What about China and Taiwan? What about whatever?" Um, we also work with the US Navy. The US Navy uses us to monitor all of the South China Sea, 13 million square kilometers, so slightly bigger than the United States area of ocean. Um, and we're... They're looking for illegal fishing activities, illegal, like, uh, North Korean vessels going against oil embargoes, uh, Chinese activities that shouldn't be where they are, building islands or what have you. They monitor that and they provide that to their allies in the region, like Philippines, so that they can all have a common understanding of where the threats are. Um, Admiral Paparo, also in that same area, who runs INDOPACOM, the command of the United States out in the Pacific, and he uses our data to monitor China for threats across China, but actually industrial facilities that might supply them. Why? Because he wants to get early warning of any threat. So for example, if China are gonna, uh, attack Taiwan, he wants to get early warning of that. Can he get a, not just a day warning, but a week or a few months? If we can give them that sort of warning, then that can help them prepare, deter, help diplomatic options and other things. The point is, information is power, and by giving it to these countries, we can help them diffuse tensions and make it more likely we, we don't need to go to war, right? So that's our mission on the security side, and now it's got so big, especially because people have seen what's happened in Ukraine, seen what Admiral Paparo is doing in China, and realize, wow, we at Planet are doing something really unique, imaging the whole world. We give everyone a peripheral vision of what's going on to help them see threats earlier. Normally, satellites before Planet were only used to look at the things people knew to look at, the nuclear facility in North Korea, the Russian missile factory, what have you. But we look at everything else and find if there's things that might be emerging that they didn't know they needed to look at.

5. 7:39 – 8:34

   Why countries want their own satellites

   1. WMWill Marshall7:39

      So now countries are coming to us and saying, "Can we buy your data? Can we buy your AI that sits on top to find these new threats?" And they're also saying, "Hey, can we just buy your satellites? 'Cause we want some of them ourselves as well."

   2. MOMolly O'Shea7:51

      Yeah.

   3. WMWill Marshall7:51

      And we're, we're initially we were like, "Well, you can just buy the data." And then they were like, "No, no, no. We really want the satellites so that we have sovereign control of them." So then we started answering the mail on that, and now we've done a number of deals. Japan is buying some of our satellites. Um, Germany is sponsoring, uh, and funding a- another fleet of satellites. Um, we're doing a some for Sweden, and these are countries that, um, are now getting their first and best optical reconnaissance system that we build. We launch them into space, and then we hand over the keys so that they get to operate them, and that's also a booming business. So now [laughs] this is why we're in this lab that's built up because we're seeing so much demand for all of that.

6. 8:34 – 10:22

   How Wall Street and Big Tech are watching from space

   1. MOMolly O'Shea8:34

      Is all of the demand on the defense side?

   2. WMWill Marshall8:37

      No. Um, we're seeing the strongest demand there right now. Um, but we are seeing also a booming commercial business and civil government business as well. So civil government is counties and states trying to use us to help stop wildfires and respond to them or NASA using it for s- science and, and Earth system science. Um, it's, uh, Brazil government using it to stop deforestation, but no one can do that on their own. AI is covering all of that. The satellites and the AI enable this scale. Now, civil government commercial, we just, um, uh, uh, are working with agriculture companies like, uh, John Deere, Bayer, BASF. We're working, and they... We help them improve crop yields. Um, we work with hedge funds. Uh, I can't tell you who, but-

   3. MOMolly O'Shea9:30

      [laughs]

   4. WMWill Marshall9:30

      ... some of the hedge funds like to work with us to get alpha on s- on stocks and commodities around the planet. We have a lot of an understanding of crop yields around the world, a lot of understanding of infrastructure development. We've even had some of the hyperscalers around here buy our data. Why? 'Cause they wanna monitor not just their data center construction, but they wanna monitor their competitor's data center construction. We have all the understanding of the data center construction all around the world, not just in the US, in China, in other places. So, so, um, we have a wide variety of applications, but it's true that defense is really what's driving the biggest boon right now. Um, we reported a significant growth last quarter. It was 58% growth, uh, year on year. Um, but I think the biggest part of that was the defense growth. So the other sectors are growing as well, uh, but the defense piece is growing the fastest.

7. 10:22 – 11:16

   The new face of warfare

   1. MOMolly O'Shea10:22

      Last year at Reagan National Defense Forum, I had an interview with Emil Michael-

   2. WMWill Marshall10:27

      Yeah

   3. MOMolly O'Shea10:27

      ... under Secretary of Defense-

   4. WMWill Marshall10:29

      Yeah

   5. MOMolly O'Shea10:29

      ... um, a- for the Department of War and, um, also the CTO there. And of [laughs] like a few companies, I think it was three or four, he mentioned Planet Labs.

   6. WMWill Marshall10:41

      Is that why you came? 'Cause-

   7. MOMolly O'Shea10:42

      [laughs]

   8. WMWill Marshall10:42

      ... he said it was a good idea. [laughs]

   9. MOMolly O'Shea10:43

      [laughs]

   10. WMWill Marshall10:44

       Yeah. Um, look, a- again, new technology is changing the nature of warfare. Um, now it is increasingly hybrid, it's increasingly distributed, and it's increasingly new technologies that can help you address that. Drones, satellites, and AI are the core of that. Um, so satellites is less known than the drones, but they're playing a critical role around the world, whether that's in Ukraine or in Iran, um, and other places around the planet.

8. 11:16 – 14:49

   The most surprising uses of satellite imagery

   1. MOMolly O'Shea11:16

      I have to ask you, what is the craziest thing or most surprising thing that you've seen?

   2. WMWill Marshall11:21

      Oh my God, I've seen so many things, but basically, um, when you think, look at a map and you see it's just static, it isn't. The whole world's changing. If you look at a, a field, the river will move. The, the, uh, you know, human activity is changing everything, but everything is changing. Um, but I mean, we've seen, uh... What I'm most excited about is what people do with our imagery. Like, it's a huge range of things. To give you some bizarre examples, we had some people in South America, um, protecting, um, uh, uh, dolphins in rivers. Even though we can't see them, we can see the activity that was limiting their, their, their range or something. And we saw, um, people, uh, use our data in Africa to stop river blindness. And you're like, how on earth can we help with river blindness? It's a disease that's, uh, river-based, but we obviously can't see what it i- But it is all to do with how close the village is to the s- stagnant water, and we can see stagnant water in the imagery. So these NGOs were using it to warn villages, "You're close to stagnant water, therefore get out of its way," or what have you. So it's just all over the place. Um, the most interesting ex- um, applications on the defense side are a little bit more sensitive, but just know that it's playing a big role in these, uh, uh, uh, conflicts around the world, and I believe one that is really helpful for the planet. As I said, diffuse tension, reduce the likelihood of civilian casualties, reduce the likelihood of war at all happening because the best, uh, um, uh, the best situation is that we don't enter a war in the first place. And information diffuses that, uh, tensions because it means that different sides can understand what's going on.

   3. MOMolly O'Shea13:09

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9. 14:49 – 17:24

   Imaging any point on Earth within 30 minutes

   1. MOMolly O'Shea14:49

      more. To walk through the satellites that you produce, you produce [laughs] a handful, and they're all called different birds. I know we talked about this on the tour, but could you walk through the different use cases or-

   2. WMWill Marshall15:00

      Yeah

   3. MOMolly O'Shea15:00

      ... the specs for each one of them, starting with Dove?

   4. WMWill Marshall15:03

      Yeah. So the Doves are our mainstay scan. That's the thing that no one else has on the planet, the daily scan of the Earth. Um, they cover all the Earth landmass, about 200 million square kilometers. Um, uh, um, so more than the landmass of the Earth. They cover a bunch of ocean territory as well, in eight spectral bands at three meter resolution. Then we have our Pelicans, which are our highest resolution satellites, and those ones, um, uh, image and particular tasks locations that our customers ask for. So one's automatically scanning. The other one you say, "Hey, take a picture of here, here, here," and then we can do that. The most unique aspect of that is that we're building up to a fleet that has much more revisit than anyone else and faster timeliness. So if you say our goal is that if you say, "Hey, I want a picture of Tahiti," you can get a picture of Tahiti, you can re- make the request, get the image back and analyzed in 30 minutes, no matter where it is on the planet. And then, um, we have, um, our Tanager spacecraft, which are our hyperspectral satellites. So instead of having three colors like our eye, these have 420 color bands, uh, that enable you to sort of get a fingerprint of what you see on the Earth. It m- it's basically 400 different images for every point on the Earth's land ma- mass that you're imaging and with really narrow spectral bands. And that, what that enables you to see is not just that that's blue or green. There's this type of blue or green such that you can identify tree species, crop species, so it's useful for ag and biodiversity and monitoring, uh, uh, land. But it's also, uh, good for defense because you can see camouflage and the distinction between camouflage and a real vehicle. It's good for emissions and pollution, so we can detect, uh, methane pollutants around the world. So if there's a gas leak, you can literally see the gas. Even though methane gas is colorless, we can see it because in this spectral band, it sticks out like a sore thumb. So we can detect those gas leaks and help pe- tell operators, "Hey, you've got a gas leak," and then they can turn it off. That's good for the planet, and it's good for them. It saves them money. So basically, different kinds of satellites that do all these different things. They're all about collecting better information to help me- people make better decisions and actions.

10. 17:24 – 19:41

    What if you could ask a satellite a question?

    1. MOMolly O'Shea17:24

       And to the point of being in San Francisco, we're moving into the intelligence era.

    2. WMWill Marshall17:29

       Yeah.

    3. MOMolly O'Shea17:29

       You guys are in beta with your AI app. So what are you doing in AI, and how does that change?

    4. WMWill Marshall17:37

       Yeah. Well, I mean, what this enables is an explosion of the number of people that can get value out of data. So I used to work at NASA. I know those guys really well that use our data there. It is amazing what they do. But that's because they've got 1,000 people that know how to analyze satellite data.

    5. MOMolly O'Shea17:55

       Mm.

    6. WMWill Marshall17:55

       That's great for them, but that farmer in Kansas or the [laughs] , you know, the journalist in Kentucky, the, uh, what the heck are they gonna do with 4 million 47 mega- pixel images every day? They don't know how to deal with that, right? So AI is coming along and is... Like, you can just ask questions and get answers. That is gonna totally explode the number of users. Um, so you know, I was saying how satellites are going from like a desktop or mainframe to desktop is what we've done on the hardware side. This is like the explosion of the number of people that could get value out of it. It's like giving people a Um, uh, a desktop with no software on it and say, "All right, off you go," uh, for, and then one in 1,000 people can get value out of it, to now you've got a basic operating system that anyone can use. Now suddenly that computer's useful to everyone, right? Basically, and that's what we see today. So space hasn't gone through that transition yet, and I think AI is the thing that opens it up for everyone else. So not just the big, uh, countries. So I think it's actually gonna help with a lot of defense and intelligence because it can, you know, help monitor large areas for threats and so on. But even more, it's gonna explode the commercial applications. It's gonna explode, uh, uh, all the applications in civil government. So many things could be be- benefited. Uh, firefighters trying to stop and, and respond to fires. Uh, uh, farmers. Uh, uh, co- counties trying to just stop illegal activity of, of, uh, whatever, people that don't have permits for swimming pools. I mean, there's just bazillions of use cases of our satellite data in principle, but the AI enables it to have value in practice to them.

11. 19:41 – 20:38

    Every AI story comes back to compute

    1. MOMolly O'Shea19:41

       Adding the layer of AI adds another business model, and we were joking about this when we were walking over there, 'cause through all the AI conversations that we have on Sorcery, it always comes down to compute. So where are you-

    2. WMWill Marshall19:54

       [laughs]

    3. MOMolly O'Shea19:54

       First, like where are you storing all this? How are you handling the shift in business model? Like, where, where are you getting all the compute?

    4. WMWill Marshall20:01

       Well, the compute piece is, is simple. We put it on Google Cloud.

    5. MOMolly O'Shea20:04

       Oh.

    6. WMWill Marshall20:04

       Um, uh, we have some stuff on AWS as well, but mainly on Google Cloud. Um, yeah, I mean, it's not changing the business model that much because we were mainly selling data anyway. But now it's just exploding the number of people that can get value out of it.

    7. MOMolly O'Shea20:18

       Okay.

    8. WMWill Marshall20:18

       It's true that we're now adding more analytical layers w- towards what we call solutions, right? That's already using some AI. But the AI tools that you were seeing are much more flexible, so again, it's not so specialized. It's more that you can answer- ask any question in, in simple language terms, and it will have a go.

12. 20:38 – 25:32

    Do data centers in space make sense?

    1. MOMolly O'Shea20:38

       Satellites, I mean, between, between what we're seeing, uh, with Planet Labs, with Starlink, with, uh, even geopolitical issues, like they've just become a really hot topic.

    2. WMWill Marshall20:51

       Yeah.

    3. MOMolly O'Shea20:52

       One of the hot topics is data centers in space, so have you thought about this at all? Is this rational, irrational? Why, why would this make sense?

    4. WMWill Marshall20:59

       Uh, we've more than thought about it. We just launched last week the first, uh, data centers, uh, test, uh, project for Google. Suncatcher is the name of their project. Um, and before that we've launched NVIDIA chips on our Pelican spacecraft. The reason we're putting more compute upstairs is to process the data quickly. It's e- i- it's great if we can, um, do the image processing, recognize the ships, do the querying up there, and then just send down the answers. That, that means we can get the answers much quicker. Uh, in the case of the LA fires, we took an image within a couple of hours of the fires starting, we got it down a couple of hours later, and then had processing time, maybe that's another hour, and then, then they got the image. So now we're talking several hours into the fire. What if we could have got that in minutes? That could have meant potentially those firefighters saving more lives or those other first responders getting more quickly to help people, right? So we want to reduce that timeline, and so having compute in space helps with that. Separately, though, yeah, there's like, should we just put all of the computers in space? And yes, I believe it totally makes sense from a, um, uh, a basic economic analysis. Um, why? The intuition comes down to something very simple. Data centers is all an energy problem. So on the ground, you would naturally power them using solar panels if you were just thinking about the cheapest way to do it, 'cause solar panels are the cheapest watts per dollar. However, then you have intermittency because of cloud and nights, but you don't want an intermittent data center. So then you have to add gas power or you have to add nuclear power. Then now we're starting to get really complicated, much more permitting, much more time. In space, for each solar panel, you get five times more power than you get on the ground 'cause you don't a- because you can put them in a sun synchronous orbit that is always looking at the sun. Um, and that means that you just keep the panel facing the sun, and it always is drawing power. No interruption from clouds, no interruption from day and night. So you don't have to have batteries, you don't have to have gas, you don't have any of those other power systems. Five times more power straight to the chips, and then you just have to add radiators to cool those chips into the darkness of space. We know how to do all of those things, and you can, you can send your commands up via radio and get your answers back via radio. There's a little of a latency, but not very much actually. So it all actually is just gonna be cheaper. Notwithstanding that, it's also gonna be better for communities that don't want these data centers in their backyard 'cause of rising energy costs, w- uh, water usage, and other challenges. It's just gonna be smarter to put that infrastructure in orbit eventually. Arthur C. Clarke talked about these sorts of ideas, the sci-fi author, many, many decades ago.

    5. MOMolly O'Shea23:53

       Yeah. Mm-hmm.

    6. WMWill Marshall23:54

       But now it's finally becoming reality, and the first piece... It eventually will put power in space and beam that down and other things, but the first piece, by far easiest, is compute. Back to the Google demo, we're just doing a demo to see if the- how their TPU is doing space. We, uh, the- we already commissioned the spacecraft. It's doing very well in space. We're very happy. We're... And Google's very happy, and it's very exciting. We will test that TPU, and we'll see how that goes, and we'll tell the world more about that as, as we go.

    7. MOMolly O'Shea24:22

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13. 25:32 – 26:55

    Why satellites are so sensitive

    1. MOMolly O'Shea25:32

       So there's increased demand globally. There's also increased sensitivity globally, and this brings in new national security concerns, especially with satellites. Why are satellites so sensitive and such sensitive assets? And what can you compare that to if someone took down a satellite?

    2. WMWill Marshall25:49

       Well, in many ways, satellites are like the sensors of countries. They are acting as their eyes and their ears. And obviously it's very threatening if you say, "Hey, I'm gonna take out your eyes and your ears." You d- can't suddenly... You're suddenly blind. The US, for example, gets its early warning of missile attacks from space.

    3. MOMolly O'Shea26:11

       Mm-hmm.

    4. WMWill Marshall26:12

       That's how it knows if North Korea is sending a missile this way. It's missiles with GPS. It's... And then there's all this civilian infrastructure that's now dependent on it. You use your maps, you use your m- iPhone, you're gonna be using GPS. You, you pay for a credit card, you're gonna be using GPS. You, you, you look at the Google Maps, you have a satellite layer, you're using satellites. You use the weather report, you're using satellites. People don't realize how much it's baked into our lives today. So it's also underpins a lot of our economy. Um, the space economy, you know, is a few hundred billion a year, but the dependencies amount to much more than that. And so countries' security depends on it and their economies depend on it, in short.

14. 26:55 – 28:37

    The NASA maverick who made Planet Labs possible

    1. MOMolly O'Shea26:56

       As you mentioned earlier, you're scaling across globally and there has been more interest per country. So why has sovereignty increased and what are you seeing?

    2. WMWill Marshall27:04

       Well, that's the backdrop of, of the geopolitical fragmentation. US administration has asked other countries to do more in defense and the US to shift more of the burden, uh, to others. And, um, in doing that, a lot of those other countries, the first thing is, "Well, I first need to understand the threats in my neighborhood." And how do you do that? Well, satellites we already just mentioned, uh, are how you get your sensing. It's how- it's your eyes and your ears. So count- one of the first things countries want is that. Now, they look around the world and they go, "Well, who's produced all the eyes and, and ears?" Well, we produced more Earth imaging satellites than any other country, uh, company. Um, and so they, of course, we're one of the first people they call. Um, so that is driving a lot of demand right now. It's very exciting. We can really help countries with their sovereignty needs. We can help them have their own satellites to which pointing where they want them to point, uh, controlling those satellites, and they get to do that really quickly. In the case of Sweden, we managed to launch the first satellite for them in four months after we signed the contract.

    3. MOMolly O'Shea28:09

       Wow.

    4. WMWill Marshall28:10

       Which, you know, normally in the aerospace industry would've taken five or 10 years. Um, we did the same, uh, uh, uh, for the, uh, one sponsored by Germany in just two months. So we can do really fast, and that is complete game changer. So the, you know, two big things that Planet does that no one else does is the daily scan and the fact that we can launch satellites real fast for people, and those two things, uh, we're really leading the world in.

15. 28:37 – 29:18

    Who's on Planet Labs no-go list

    1. MOMolly O'Shea28:37

       Who's on the no-go list? [laughs]

    2. WMWill Marshall28:38

       Well, there's definitely a no-go list. Um, I mean, firstly there's a list of US embargoed countries. Um, the EU has equivalent lists. The UN, obviously we don't tell the sa- terrorists and-

    3. MOMolly O'Shea28:51

       [laughs]

    4. WMWill Marshall28:51

       ... you know, to, uh, North Korea. Um, but we in addition have a, um, a group of, uh, employees that look at deals and really think, "How is this aligned with our values?" And ensuring that we're gonna see positive outcomes from that. So, uh, we really care about this. It's something that we think very carefully about. Uh, we know that our technology is very powerful and we want to be good stewards of that.

16. 29:18 – 33:34

    Will's prediction on finding aliens

    1. MOMolly O'Shea29:18

       Will, this is a difficult question. You have probably seen more images of the Earth than anyone else. One, have you seen any-

    2. WMWill Marshall29:28

       Aliens

    3. MOMolly O'Shea29:28

       ... aliens?

    4. WMWill Marshall29:29

       [laughs]

    5. MOMolly O'Shea29:30

       [laughs]

    6. WMWill Marshall29:31

       I knew it. Um, no. In the short answer, we've seen lots of funny things. In fact, the US Air Force, uh, alien office, whatever it's called, did ask us for imagery and we did provide. No, I mean, in short answer there isn't really anything, uh-

    7. MOMolly O'Shea29:47

       They move too fast? What's the deal?

    8. WMWill Marshall29:49

       Yeah, I mean, funny objects, trying to look at flying objects, flying devices, what have you, anomalous stuff. Now most of it there isn't really... I, I'm, I'm sad because actually the interesting backdrop is that the, um, the universe is remarkably silent. We haven't seen any aliens yet, and that's shocking. Um, my co-founder worked on a mission called TESS at NASA, which was looking at other planets around nearby sol- s- star systems. So we've now discovered over 6,300 planets all around in the n- local galactic neighborhood, and none of them have any ba- obvious signs of life yet. And now we're still w- looking, but i- in many ways the universe is eerily silent. And this is what E- Enrico Fermi called the, we now call the Fermi paradox after his question, which is basically, what gives? How come there's so many planets, the universe is so big, and we still haven't heard from the aliens? This is a big question. I predict that we'll actually find life off Earth within the next 10 years.

    9. MOMolly O'Shea31:00

       10 years.

    10. WMWill Marshall31:01

        Actually, I predicted that a few years ago, so now-

    11. MOMolly O'Shea31:03

        Oh [laughs]

    12. WMWill Marshall31:03

        ... it's probably more like six or seven.

    13. MOMolly O'Shea31:04

        [laughs]

    14. WMWill Marshall31:06

        And the reason is we're gonna look at all those planets and look at their atmospheres. With the modern best telescopes we have on the Earth and the James Webb, uh, Telescope, we can s- actually tell chemical signatures, doing what we do with our Tanager satellite, but looking out. And with that, we should be able to see certain signs of the atmospheres that might be indications of life. Like, if you looked at the Earth, you would see 20% oxygen in the atmosphere. That's a dead giveaway, 'cause oxygen grabs onto anything. It oxidizes iron, it oxidizes everything. The only reason we have all this abundance is 'cause life is, keeps on, all the plants keep on pushing all that up. If we saw anything like that, we would go, "That planet probably has life." We won't be certain, we haven't seen the picture of the alien yet, but we go, "That is anomalous." We haven't done that yet, but with all that survey, I think we'll probably find it, but still that, that could be life that's not intelligent. We would expect to see radio waves from these things, and we've looked at most of those kind of things, and there isn't. We haven't seen any obvious signs of technology or technological life forms, and so that's rather worrying [laughs] because one possibility is that we get to technology stages, and then we blow ourselves up. You know, people seriously worry about this. Like, we've got nukes. We're sort of getting through that.

    15. MOMolly O'Shea32:24

        [laughs] Yeah.

    16. WMWill Marshall32:24

        Now we've got AI.

    17. MOMolly O'Shea32:25

        Yeah.

    18. WMWill Marshall32:26

        Very scary. Obviously amazing upside potential, like we were talking about, but also brings real risks, as we saw with recent hacking events and other things. AI could help terrorists build bad things, and, and we've got real risks of AI. And then there's the whole control thing. Can we even control it? We don't know that the reason it's eerily silent is actually because they blow themselves up when they get to this stage. Hopefully not, but it's, this is why what we do right now with taking care of planet Earth, or as I call it, spaceship Earth, 'cause we're all on a spaceship, 8 billion of us, like Buckminster Fuller, uh, observed, um, and it's, it's the only place that there is life that we know yet. Maybe there's other places, but so far it's the only one. Therefore, our responsibility to take care of it and not blow it up is, like, not just locally important, it's cosmically important. It's our cosmic duty to take care of the Earth. And so in short answer, no, we haven't seen any aliens, uh, but that makes our role here even more

17. 33:34 – 35:05

    Inside NASA's alien hotline

    1. WMWill Marshall33:34

       important.

    2. MOMolly O'Shea33:34

       Question. Are there any conspiracy theories we should be paying attention to?

    3. WMWill Marshall33:40

       I'm not a big... I mean, you're talking to a scientist here.

    4. MOMolly O'Shea33:43

       Okay.

    5. WMWill Marshall33:43

       Most of the... My friend at NASA used to run the hotline for, uh, for aliens, and 90-something percent-

    6. MOMolly O'Shea33:52

       The hotline for aliens?

    7. WMWill Marshall33:53

       Basically

    8. MOMolly O'Shea33:53

       Like if the aliens would call? [laughs]

    9. WMWill Marshall33:54

       The crazy... No, no, not the alien.

    10. MOMolly O'Shea33:56

        [laughs]

    11. WMWill Marshall33:57

        No. The people calling thinking they've seen aliens-

    12. MOMolly O'Shea33:59

        Oh, gosh

    13. WMWill Marshall34:00

        ... is what I meant. Um, or the fruitcake line, as he would call it. Um-

    14. MOMolly O'Shea34:06

        Oh, no. [laughs]

    15. WMWill Marshall34:06

        Because most of it, unfortunately, isn't real.

    16. MOMolly O'Shea34:09

        Yeah.

    17. WMWill Marshall34:09

        It's like most of it's people observing Venus and not realizing that it's Venus. Over 90% though is that one use case, by the way. Uh, so unfortunately it's, most of these things have very similar explanations, and even the ones that we can't explain, and there are definitely some that we can't explain, the chances of it being aliens are really low. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, and we haven't got that. But it's fun to think about aliens in our galactic neighborhood and of, uh, I think, again, in the next few years we might see some.

    18. MOMolly O'Shea34:38

        Do you have any particular sci-fi movies or books that you like?

    19. WMWill Marshall34:41

        Well, I like Star Trek. I like, um, uh, probably my favorite is Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, which was made into a film, but the best is the radio series original, which is... I mean, those guys sometimes were drunk doing this radio, but they were-

    20. MOMolly O'Shea34:55

        [laughs]

    21. WMWill Marshall34:55

        ... amazingly funny.

    22. MOMolly O'Shea34:57

        Yeah.

    23. WMWill Marshall34:57

        And, uh, that's why, yeah, uh, my favorite numbers, 42, the answer to life, the universe, and everything, and all the rest of it.

18. 35:05 – 38:21

    How a childhood hero inspired Will’s space career

    1. MOMolly O'Shea35:05

       Amazing. Okay. So as we close out, I'm gonna ask our partner question. So our partner is Brex. Um, spending smarter, moving faster. They're corporate agentic finance platform. [laughs] They're super intelligent, 'cause that's what we call it now, super intelligence. Um, so in terms of the topic of performance, I like to take in this in more of, like, a personal bend. Like, people say you're a culmination of the five people you surround yourself with or people that inspire you or mentor you. So I'm curious, who is that person or people for you?

    2. WMWill Marshall35:38

       When I was a kid, I was really inspired by an astronomer in England called Patrick Moore, who I got to meet. He's a bit like the Carl Sagan of England.

    3. MOMolly O'Shea35:46

       Okay.

    4. WMWill Marshall35:46

       And I was young, building telescopes not so different from these, it's just on the ground pointing up-

    5. MOMolly O'Shea35:52

       Mm

    6. WMWill Marshall35:52

       ... not in space pointing down. Um, and, um, so one of my teachers took me to meet him, and he was like a god to me. And I was like, "Oh my God, we're going to see Patrick Moore." So he became a bit of a, a mentor, but I've been lucky to have many mentors that I look up to. Um, I did my PhD very fortuitously with Roger Penrose, who's a mathematical cosmologist, but he doesn't limit himself even to that. I was doing stuff with him on physics, but he also has ideas about consciousness. He speculates, he does amazing stuff in mathematics. Uh, like he came up with these, uh, Penrose tiling. He c- made contributions in cosmology. Um, uh, uh, he actually helped to prove that, uh, uh, singularities could really exist in practice, like stars could collapse into a black hole. The theory was clear from Einstein, but he actually proved that a non-symmetric star could eventually be a black hole. So in practice, and, uh, that also means that there could be the end of time if the end of the universe collapses. We don't think we're in that scenario. We think we're gonna continue expanding now. But anyway, really interesting mathematics. And I mean, when you meet people like that, it's just I'm inspired by the genius. I mean, these guys are totally different playing field.

    7. MOMolly O'Shea37:11

       Yeah.

    8. WMWill Marshall37:11

       Um, and it's very humbling. Um, he at 70, when I was doing my PhD, was running rings around all of the rest of the professors, and of course me as a student who's probably come in half hangover from the night before, and this guy is going, you know, talk about string theory and cosmology and all the rest of it. And, um, it's humbling to see genius, basically. And so I've been very lucky with mentors like that through my career. When I was at NASA, I had Pete Worden, who, um, was a sort of maverick in the space industry. He was in the s- in the US Air Force, then he went to NASA to run the NASA center that I worked at. And, uh, um, w- we argued a lot, but I learned a huge amount from this, this guy, and he really a- gave us a shield at NASA to do innovative things. And that's where we started with this, let's throw some phones into space and see if they worked.

    9. MOMolly O'Shea38:13

       [laughs]

    10. WMWill Marshall38:13

        Which by the way, is what led to all of this. [laughs]

    11. MOMolly O'Shea38:16

        Yeah.

    12. WMWill Marshall38:16

        And so we're very-- uh, it sort of brings us right back to where we, where we began.

19. 38:21 – 40:29

    Why persistence matters most

    1. MOMolly O'Shea38:21

       I guess to distill that down, what is the key lesson that you've learned through building the company throughout the years, going public, launching more into space?

    2. WMWill Marshall38:30

       Well, people say startups are all about timing, I say-- and the best idea, and of course those things are obviously important. But I'd say persistence and endurance is the biggest thing that actually distinguishes entrepreneurs that succeed and don't. Our team has been at this for years, and we knew that we were on a mission that was really important to help the planet. Security, sustainability, AI, all the things that we can envision how it can help us, and we weren't gonna stop, uh, just 'cause some VC said, "No, you can't."

    3. MOMolly O'Shea39:06

       [laughs]

    4. WMWill Marshall39:06

       "That's crazy. No one's ever launched that many satellites. No one's ever," you know, whatever. And, uh, that determination, that grit is what keeps-- and that inspiration of helping the planet is p- making the best positive contribution with these tools, is what keeps us going every day. And, um, I'm, I was so proud on our 10th anniversary that seven of the first 10 employees of Planet were still working at Planet.

    5. MOMolly O'Shea39:33

       Wow.

    6. WMWill Marshall39:34

       And we just had our 15th anniversary, and there's still about half of the first 10 are still at Planet. That's-- says a huge amount, right? They could probably work anywhere, these guys. They incredible skills. Um, but they choose to continue to work at Planet because, um, they think the mission's cool, they're doing amazing. They get to work on satellites every day, and who doesn't like that?

    7. MOMolly O'Shea39:56

       I don't know. People love it.

    8. WMWill Marshall39:58

       [laughs]

    9. MOMolly O'Shea39:58

       People love it. And if you haven't watched the tour yet, please watch the tour. It's amazing. Will, thank you so much.

    10. WMWill Marshall40:04

        Any moment.

    11. MOMolly O'Shea40:04

        What an amazing place to end it, and congrats on all the success.

    12. WMWill Marshall40:08

        Thanks for coming.

    13. MOMolly O'Shea40:09

        [upbeat music] Hey, it's Molly. If you enjoy our interviews, check out our newsletter, Sourcery.vc, where we deliver a once a week top deals and tech headlines email, and also go deeper on our podcast interviews. Subscribe to Sourcery today. And don't forget to subscribe to the podcast on YouTube, Spotify, Apple, or wherever you listen. Link in description to sign up.

Episode duration: 40:33