🌎 Welcome back to the CleanTechies PodLetter, founder edition.
Today, we are talking to Dan Katz of Orbital Sidekick.
In this episode, you will find:
How Dan and his co-founder, Tushar decided to build a satellite company to help stop climate change.
Learn how they started with a business model first, found PMF, built an MVP, went to market, and raised their funding.
Dan’s advice on talent and the speed of hiring.
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The Guest: Dan Katz
Dan started his career in the aerospace industry building satellites for other organizations.
In the wake of the frothy space exploration market, Dan and his colleague believed they could also build a company in this space. This paired with their realization that the ocean was boiling, led them to focus on catching methane leaks. So they started Orbital Sidekick in Dan’s garage.
Today they have several satellites in the air and paying customers.
The Company: Orbital Sidekick
Climate Data, Monitoring, Minerals, Hardware
One-liner: Persistent, global monitoring to identify and stop GHG emissions.
Orbital Sidekick, builds and launches hyperspectral satellites that have a variety of climate uses. A hyperspectral satellite is able to see in much greater detail and different reflections of light to use it to identify more than just objects.
Their first usecase, which Dan explains the rationale for in the episode, is to monitor pipelines to idenitfy methane leaks.
In the future, they hope to identify geographies with critical minerals beneath the surface.
📝 Show Notes:
Topics
2:00 Intro to Dan
5:45 How to Identify Subsurface Minerals
12:00 Why he Became an Entrepreneur
19:00 PMF & MVP
22:00 GTM & Raising
26:00 Watching Their Launch
31:15 Challenges
35:34 Talent
39:00 Take the Leap
Links
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🙏🏽 Thanks for tuning in and see you all next episode!
#140 Big Oil Bogeyman, Watching Your Satellites Launch, Biz Model First, & More w/ Dan Katz (Orbital Sidekick)